The Bigger Picture

from climate.nasa.gov

Venezuela imploding. Syria exploding. Record levels of carbon dioxide in the Antarctic. Record temperatures throughout the planet. Record numbers of refugees everywhere. A widening gap between the wealthiest and the poorest. "Powerful groups, especially in corrupt states, use their power to capture resources," explains political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon, associate director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation. "You get a polarization of wealth, a weakening of state capacity, and urban stress. We are seeing these things around the world now," he continues. "As environmental stresses get worse, [their effects] become more common." In other words, battle lines being drawn, as Buffalo Springfield sang back in 1966. Will we humans continue to fight our petty battles, put up ever taller walls, and blame each other as our planet slowly withers away around us in the wake of climate change? Or, to put it more ominously, as does Cynthia Arnson, director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program, "Who defines when the beginning of the end has begun?": http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/climate-change-environmental-stress-can-tip-nations-into-catastrophe
   A group of researchers has figured out how to quickly determine the answer to a frequently asked question, "Is this particular catastrophe a result of climate change?": http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/researchers-push-out-study-of-european-floods-in-under-a-week/
   Stephen Stills, then of Buffalo Springfield and later of Crosby, Stills, and Nash (& sometimes Young) fame, wrote "For What It's Worth," better known by a line from its refrain, "stop, children, what's that sound" (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXp7AAirwqo

Memory Serves

from Institute of Neuro Innovation

After all the disconcerting information we've gotten over the years about Alzheimer's comes reason for hope. A study ~ admittedly, a small and still short-term one ~ found that a multi-pronged treatment called metabolic enhancement for neurodegeneration (MEND) not only halted but actually reversed the symptoms of the disease. The patients were in the early stage, and the program involved diet, exercise, and sleep habits as well as a combination of drugs, vitamins, and brain stimulation therapy: http://www.sciencealert.com/small-trial-shows-memory-loss-from-alzheimer-s-disease-can-be-reversed

Seize the Sea

It seems that every time one turns around, there's another international crisis brewing somewhere. One that's been slowly building up steam (to continue with the cooking metaphor) is the dispute over the South China Sea. China is laying claim to a large part of it, and the reason is obvious: This waterway sees more than $5 trillion of trade a year. But the Philippines disputes that claim and, in fact, has brought the whole thing to The Hague for adjudication. The tribunal's decision, which may come in the next month or so, isn't enforceable, but it could make a difference, and now all of a sudden the major players (and this includes, of course, the United States on the side of the Philippines) are working hard to gain adherents. There has also been more military presence in the area of late, and China has over the last few years built up more than 3,000 acres of land on some of the sea's islands and reefs. "If you think in terms of a chess board, everyone is moving pieces around in anticipation of the next phase of events in the South China Sea emerging from that PCA [Permanent Court of Arbitration] finding," explains Malcolm Davis, senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute: http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2015/10/islands-in-storm.html and http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-12/china-u-s-race-to-woo-supporters-before-south-china-sea-ruling
   Above-water land isn't the only thing the Chinese are working on in the South China Sea. They have plans to build an underwater, manned deep-sea (as in 10,000 feet down) platform from which to mine for minerals and also, some suspect, to use for military purposes: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-07/china-pushes-plan-for-oceanic-space-station-in-south-china-sea

El Kah-Pop

Where, besides South Korea, will you find K-pop stars in the making? Would you believe Mexico? Anyone needing proof of the power of music to bring people together need look no further than the K-Pop Academy in Mexico City. Run by the Korean Cultural Center, it opened recently and has reported that more than 400 applicants are now vying for the 60 available spots. Students will learn how to pronounce the Korean song lyrics and get singing and dancing lessons, all taught by K-pop professionals: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-36468706

Conversion Rate

As our 60,000-year-old history of human migration continues, we are bearing witness to its many repercussions, both positive and negative, intended and not. One of those that may come as a surprise is the recent news that there has been a rise in the number of Muslim refugees in Europe converting to Christianity. This may also come as a surprise to ISIS/Daesh, whose violent tactics have been named by many of those refugees as the reason for their conversion. Of course, there are those, too, who hope that converting will help them obtain asylum. "There are many reasons [for conversion] but among them is undoubtedly the mass movement of people and the increasing interconnectedness of the world," notes Toby Howarth, bishop of Bradford. "The world ~ and people’s identities ~ are being shaken up": http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/05/european-churches-growing-flock-muslim-refugees-converting-christianity
   Another example of this shake-up comes from South America, where among the millions who have abandoned Catholicism for evangelicalism, there are those who, like a couple of very determined men and those who followed them in Colombia, did not stop there but moved from evangelicalism to Orthodox Judaism (story, video): https://story.californiasunday.com/colombian-church-orthodox-judaism

Just Because: 'Porcelain: A Memoir'

Jaime Espinoza/Aesthetic Magazine

It's funny how families evolve (and devolve) over time. A person who had incalculable positive influence on and in the world can be followed, generations later, by descendants who live in the same insignificant anonymity as most of the rest of us. And then, one day, that same lineage can find itself graced by another fascinating and influential individual. Richard Melville Hall, aka Moby, polymath extraordinaire, is, famously, the great-great-great-grand nephew of Herman Melville (1819-1891), best known for his novel Moby-Dick, the short story Bartleby, the Scrivener, and the unfinished novella Billy Budd. This author, too, was a man of many talents and occupations. His scion, Moby, has added to our current line-up of music memoirs (think Patti Smith's Just Kids, Keith Richards's Life) with Porcelain: A Memoir. Unlike so many of the others, it's about a more recent time, the '90s, but like so many of the others, it tells the story of a talented guy for whom music is an escape from an otherwise dismal life.

Preface

THE FUTURE

All the stores at the Dock mall in Stratford, Connecticut, were closed for the night, except for the Fresh-n-Kleen Laundromat. My mom was inside the Laundromat, wearing blue jeans and a brown winter jacket that she'd bought at the Salvation Army for five dollars. She stood at a cracked linoleum counter underneath flickering fluorescent lights, smoking a Winston cigarette and folding clothes. Some of the clothes were ours, and some belonged to our neighbors, who sometimes would pay us to wash and fold their laundry. On this March night the storefronts were dark; the parking lot was empty except for our silver Chevy Vega and one other car. The cold was wet and heavy, and the piles of snow in the corners of the parking lot had turned gray and were melting in the rain.
   Every two weeks I'd find myself at the Dock, doing laundry with my mom. I would help her, or just sit on the fiberglass shell chairs in the Laundromat and watch the giant dryers spinning in their fast, lopsided way. My mom had been unemployed for over a year, and her last relationship had ended when her boyfriend tried to stab her to death. Sometimes I would find her crying while she folded the

A Tale for Our Times

Michael Jackson is one of those featured in the series                   David Baltzer/Zenit/IAIF/Redux

Many famous novels started out as serialized installments in magazines ~ The Count of Monte Cristo, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Madame Bovary, In Cold Blood, and The Bonfire of the Vanities, to name a few (also, every one of Charles Dickens's novels, to name a few more). In a more contemporary take on that fine tradition, there's whatever this undertaking by 9MOTHER9HORSE9EYES9 turns into. It apparently began in April with a post on Reddit and continued with various and seemingly random entries here and there. Eventually, a pattern began to emerge. When consolidated, the fragments were seen to make up the backdrop of a story now nicknamed The Interface Series. The author, who describes himself as "a 30-something American male without the benefit of a college education and a stable job," admits to errors both historical and grammatical and to "laughably overwrought prose." Be that as it may, he has garnered not an insignificant number of fans ~ and subreddits (story, links to interview and the series): http://qz.com/696658/someone-is-writing-a-mysterious-dystopian-novel-of-the-future-in-reddit-comments/

One Is Silver and the Other's Gold

Richard Renaldi

There's another photography project on the streets of the Big Apple. First, there was HONY (Humans of New York: http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/04/zoo-york-and-boston-too.html, http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/08/more-humans.html), and now, for something a little different, we have Touching Strangers. Photographer Richard Renaldi poses people who've never met as if they've known each other all their lives. As one might expect, some of these strangers embrace the opportunity, quite literally, while others just can't seem to get past their awkwardness ~ and of course, the camera captures it all (video): http://www.truth-code.com/2016/05/two-strangers-were-asked-to-pose-in.html

A Living Wage

celebrating in Bern                                                                                  Denis Balibouse/Reuters

Somewhere not too long ago, I read a piece about the workplace of the future ~ or rather, the non-workplace of the future. The idea was that with so much work being automated, there will be that many fewer jobs for humans, so our whole system and way of thinking will have to change to accommodate the reality of people not having to actually work. There is a concurrent thread winding its way through the ethos about how our long-accepted financial system is causing a quickly widening gap between the ultra-poor and the ultra-wealthy of this world. In a study that combines the two premises, the Silicon Valley company Y Combinator will be paying 100 families in the city of Oakland, California, a minimum wage, no strings attached, for six months to a year. "The study," according to the article, "will test payment methods and data collection, as well as whether the money meets people’s core needs, and how it affects people’s 'happiness, well-being, financial health, as well as how people spend their time' ": http://qz.com/696377/y-combinator-is-running-a-basic-income-experiment-with-100-oakland-families/
   Switzerland, the world's fifth-richest country, will be voting on this very issue on June 4. The referendum is on whether the government should guarantee every citizen a minimum income: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-swiss-vote-on-guaranteed-income-is-about-rich-peoples-problems

All Eyes

Eyes are amazing, but even more amazing, if that's possible, is the fact that some creatures can "see" without them. It's a finding that has mesmerized ~ and frustrated ~ the scientists who study it. "We're not just focusing on eyes that look like our eyes," says Duke University biologist Dr. Sönke Johnsen. For example, the new thought about sea urchins, which don't have identifiable eyes and yet seem to be able to see, is that they are, in fact, giant, spiny eyeballs. Octopuses have eyes that we recognize as such, but their skin also contains photoreceptors, and the Asian swallowtail butterfly has a grouping of photoreceptors on its genitals. It comes down to molecules called opsins, which are what allow the photoreceptors in animal retinas to see. “What it means to be an eye is so much broader than we originally thought,” says Johnsen: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/some-animals-%E2%80%98see%E2%80%99-world-through-oddball-eyes?utm_source=Society+for+Science+Newsletters&utm_campaign=e02b1e7c5b-editors_picks_week_of_0516165_21_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a4c415a67f-e02b1e7c5b-104586561

Lower School

taking a break from the climb                                                                            Chinatopix via AP

It's hard to believe this is true, but apparently it is. There is a small mountain village in southwest China whose children ~ ages 6 to 15 ~ have what is possibly the world's most dangerous and thrilling jaunt to school. Because home is 800 meters (2,625 feet) up a vertical rock cliff and school is not, they climb down ancient vine ladders in the morning and up them in the afternoon, with backpack. "You have to be 100% careful," explained Chen Jie, the photographer who discovered this and climbed it himself, three times. "If you have any kind of accident, you will fall straight into the abyss." I guess that takes care of the P.E. portion of the day (story, video): http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/27/worlds-most-dangerous-school-run-chinese-children-800m-cliff

Just Because: 'litany'

Mahogany L. Browne

 " 'litany' was written," writes poet Mahogany L. Browne in what is the best possible introduction to this poem, "after the anniversary of 'I Wish I Knew How It Felt To Be Free,' made famous by Nina Simone. And I sat with what that meant, years later—when I am still wishing for a certain type of freedom. To think of the time passing but of senseless deaths of black and brown bodies remaining. The poem was a mulling of all that has changed and all that has not. Injustice has not changed. Poverty has not changed. The idea that I am writing from poem to check to mouth/house is no coincidence. And the building on my corner was most certainly burned to the ground, leaving folks homeless. Within two weeks there was talk of building condos. And my neighbors and I, free to watch, stood on the opposite corner of the destroyed building as contractors stomped in and out of the remains. Someone smiled loudly about the 'new multimillion-dollar building plans.' And it didn't feel like freedom at all." from poem-a-day:

I wish I knew how
It would feel to be free
I wish I could break
All the chains holding me
—Nina Simone

today i am a black woman in america
& i am singing a melody ridden lullaby
it sounds like:
     the gentrification of a brooklyn stoop
     the rent raised three times my wages
     the bodega and laundromat burned down on the corner
     the people on the corner
          each lock & key of their chromosomes
          a note of ash & inquiry on their tongues

today i am a black woman in a hopeless state
i will apply for financial aid and food stamps
     with the same mouth i spit poems from
i will ask the angels of a creative god to lessen
     the blows
& i will beg forgiveness when i curse
     the rising sun

today, i am a black woman in a body of coal
i am always burning and no one knows my name
i am a nameless fury, i am a blues scratched from

Chasing Lolita

butterfly hunting in Switzerland Horst Tappe/Getty Images

Who knew? Russian-American author Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899-1977) is most well-known ~ and venerated ~ for his seminal novel Lolita. But who knew he was also a lepidopterist? And that he created chess challenges? And that he was a synesthete? AND that he wrote the aforementioned masterpiece over five years as his wife, Véra, drove them in their black Oldsmobile from New York to Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana so he could chase butterflies? People have undertaken many journeys following in the footsteps of those they admire, and this particular road trip follows not just the author but two of his most memorable creations, Humbert Humbert and his Lolita (and thanks to MD for reminding me): http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/travel/vladimir-nabokov-lolita.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Just Because: 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe'

In honor of Towel Day May 25 (see post immediately below this one), which, in its turn, is in honor of everyone's favorite geek-author, Douglas Adams (1952-2001), and in a spirit of unending generosity toward those who may not have heard of him or his indispensable Guide or any of its sequels, the tantalizing first couple of pages, lovingly transcribed (and as you're reading the first and only sentence of the second paragraph, it would behoove you to remember that it and every sentence before and after it were published in 1979):

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
   Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
   This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
   And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
   Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
   And then, on Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
   Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid

Towel Day Is Coming!

© kreg.steppe, license: creative commons

For a nicely and thoroughly detailed explanation of exactly why it is that the simple towel, at one time (prior to 1979) taken for granted, has gained so much respect ~ and why we all need to carry one with us wherever we go on May 25, see http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2013/05/towel-day-may-25.html
   Can you evade the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal for 42 seconds to save the world? (game): http://survive42.github.io/Survive42/

The Hard Times of Mrs. Dickens

Catherine Dickens

This account of the marriage of Charles Dickens and Catherine Hogarth, written by their great-great-great granddaughter, reminds me of the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2012/11/just-because-zelda-biography.html). The couples are similar in that both spouses are talented but only one follows that talent and is recognized. Both marriages were just as miserable toward their end as they were happy in the beginning. Both women were multi-talented and expected to tamp down that talent in order to provide the emotional and daily support every very gifted artist requires. Both marriages suffered from the stress brought on by the husbands' popularity, and both women were looked on unfavorably by the public in their time and for some time afterward: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160519-the-forgotten-wife-of-charles-dickens

One Ring To Rule Them All

The story of the dynasty started by Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) affirms the long-suspected fact that money in politics is nothing new. Also that money is power. And that, of course, should come as no surprise. But check out this book's subtitle: The Secret Origins of the First World War. This is about more than one family using its considerable and zealously guarded wealth to buy politicians and to manipulate them and events to their own ends. Here's a book summary from Random House Books (Australia): "Hidden History uniquely exposes those responsible for the First World War. It reveals how accounts of the war's origins have been deliberately falsified to conceal the guilt of the secret cabal of very rich and powerful men in London responsible for the most heinous crime perpetrated on humanity." This excerpt, though, focuses on one family, perhaps as representative of the group. from delanceyplace.com:

Today's selection -- from Hidden History by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor. The Rothschild dynasty controlled a banking empire that financed royalty and nations throughout Europe and beyond. They were the wealthiest family in the world, and their power was such that it rivaled and often surpassed the power of kings:

"The Rothschild dynasty was all-powerful in British and world banking and they considered themselves the equals of royalty, even to the extent of calling their London base 'New Court'. Like the British royal family, their roots lay in Germany, and the Rothschilds were possibly the most authentic dynasty of them all. They practised endogamy as a means of preventing dispersal of their great wealth, marrying not just within their own faith but also within their own immediate family. Of 21 marriages of the descendants of Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the original family patriarch, no fewer than 15 were between cousins.
   "Wealth begets wealth, never more so when it can provide or deny funds to governments and dominate the financial market on a global scale. The Rothschilds were pre-eminent in this field. They manipulated politicians, befriended kings, emperors and influential aristocrats, and developed their

Math and the Mind

trinity.edu

In the 18th century, an English Presbyterian minister named Thomas Bayes (1701-1761) came up with a theorem. Not only a man of the cloth, Bayes was also a statistician and philosopher. Basically, he wrote a formula for figuring out the probability that a prediction would be correct, given past and current observations. The idea that a mathematical formula would be of any use in understanding mental disorders is not new, but it's never worked before. Still, there are those who see a light at the end of this particular tunnel. It's possible, they contend, that, in individuals with schizophrenia and autism in particular, sensory distortions may alter the way experience and new evidence are weighed. There are still many questions to be answered, but some studies have offered evidence that backs the concept: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bayesian-reasoning-implicated-some-mental-disorders?utm_source=Society+for+Science+Newsletters&utm_campaign=0caa912e9b-Latest_From_Science_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a4c415a67f-0caa912e9b-104586561

The View From Now

screen shot

The more we learn, the more we realize just how interconnected everything is ~ in our bodies, in our world, in the universe, and, really, throughout all space and time. What's most curious is how the connections can echo each other. A computer simulation a few years ago suggested that the growth of the universe could mirror that of the brain, and earlier studies have found a similarity between brain circuits and the internet (http://www.livescience.com/25027-universe-grows-like-brain.html). In 2006, astronomers found a double-helix nebula in the Milky Way, the double helix, of course, being the pattern of our DNA (http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Astronomers-Report-Unprecedented-6903?RelNum=6903). If you want to get really esoteric about it, consider this, from the late, great astronomer and cosmologist Carl Sagan: "The cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." (Before continuing, I really must mention one of the best

Free To Be You and Me?

Apparently not. Just as the astronomic advances in medical technology and neuroscience have brought us more and more helpful information about ourselves, they have also brought us, kicking and screaming, to a truth that negates all that we have wanted to believe about ourselves. Like one of the monoliths in 2001: A Space Odyssey (cue the Blue Danube Waltz), this discovery at once fascinates and frightens, and like the monolith, once comprehended, it cannot be uncomprehended. Its consequences, both for the individual and for society, are huge. So perhaps the question is, How do we live with it? Depending on which camp one chooses (if you will, and pardon the pun) to join, it can either "free" us or it can enslave us: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-will/480750/