Urban Evolution

Dr. Munshi-South has joined the ranks of a small but growing number of field biologists who study urban evolution — not the rise and fall of skyscrapers and neighborhoods, but the biological changes that cities bring to the wildlife that inhabits them. For these scientists, the New York metropolitan region is one great laboratory.

White-footed mice, stranded on isolated urban islands, are evolving to adapt to urban stress. Fish in the Hudson have evolved to cope with poisons in the water. Native ants find refuge in the median strips on Broadway. And more familiar urban organisms, like bedbugs, rats and bacteria, also mutate and change in response to the pressures of the metropolis. In short, the process of evolution is responding to New York and other cities the way it has responded to countless environmental changes over the past few billion years. Life adapts.

-- Cark Zimmer for The New York Times

Can't bedbugs just go extinct? We actually have not been afflicted by that plague yet, but one hears it is such a growing thing, that it is only a matter of time. Then how will I sleep?

Urban Evolution

Dr. Munshi-South has joined the ranks of a small but growing number of field biologists who study urban evolution — not the rise and fall of skyscrapers and neighborhoods, but the biological changes that cities bring to the wildlife that inhabits them. For these scientists, the New York metropolitan region is one great laboratory.

White-footed mice, stranded on isolated urban islands, are evolving to adapt to urban stress. Fish in the Hudson have evolved to cope with poisons in the water. Native ants find refuge in the median strips on Broadway. And more familiar urban organisms, like bedbugs, rats and bacteria, also mutate and change in response to the pressures of the metropolis. In short, the process of evolution is responding to New York and other cities the way it has responded to countless environmental changes over the past few billion years. Life adapts.

-- Cark Zimmer for The New York Times

Can't bedbugs just go extinct? We actually have not been afflicted by that plague yet, but one hears it is such a growing thing, that it is only a matter of time. Then how will I sleep?

Miley

Miley smokes? A young, beautiful, rich girl who enjoys the big stage singing to the thousands of worshipful fans. Why would she play with her health like that?

(Courtesy of ONTD)

Miley

Miley smokes? A young, beautiful, rich girl who enjoys the big stage singing to the thousands of worshipful fans. Why would she play with her health like that?

(Courtesy of ONTD)

A Debt Deal

The deal isn't finalized yet, but it looks like we have a deal and we are only waiting for the faux-celebration when the President signs. Obama will make it seem like a big victory, but the only people who can truly feel that way are these Tea Party yahoos and their billionaire backers.

I am in that mood where I don't want to follow news anymore, or at least not political news. I don't know why I ever should want to. It's not my world, no matter what. But sometimes that becomes so resoundingly clear that I can wonder how I ever came to care.

Bah, until the brainwaves are stilled forever and one is buried over, one can still appreciate the black comedy of it all. And, of course, there are the little joys, like this sunny morning, and the cats, and all those books, so many worlds in which to get happily lost.

I think I'll hang out at the Chestnut Tree Cafe this morning. Care to join me for a little Victory Gin?

( Krugman excerpt )

A Debt Deal

The deal isn't finalized yet, but it looks like we have a deal and we are only waiting for the faux-celebration when the President signs. Obama will make it seem like a big victory, but the only people who can truly feel that way are these Tea Party yahoos and their billionaire backers.

I am in that mood where I don't want to follow news anymore, or at least not political news. I don't know why I ever should want to. It's not my world, no matter what. But sometimes that becomes so resoundingly clear that I can wonder how I ever came to care.

Bah, until the brainwaves are stilled forever and one is buried over, one can still appreciate the black comedy of it all. And, of course, there are the little joys, like this sunny morning, and the cats, and all those books, so many worlds in which to get happily lost.

I think I'll hang out at the Chestnut Tree Cafe this morning. Care to join me for a little Victory Gin?

( Krugman excerpt )

1944 FDR on the Holocaust

FDR finally breaks his silence on the Holocaust and does so in a big way, though it is late in the season, March 24, 1944. He issues this statement in an Oval Office session with reporters.

_ _ _

“In one of the blackest crimes of all history - begun by the Nazis in the day of peace and multiplied by them a hundred times in time of war - the wholesale, systematic murder of the Jews of Europe goes on unabated every hour.... None who participates in these acts of savagery shall go unpunished....

"Hitler is committing these crimes against humanity in the name of the German people. I am asking every German and every person … everywhere under Nazi domination to show the world by his action that in his heart he does not share these insane criminal desires. Let him hide these pursued victims, help them to get over their borders and do what he can to save them from the Nazi hangman.”

-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt

_ _ _

As Beschloss relates, the active response of the administration to this problem remained retarded. For instance, the President vetoed “a suggestion that the statement include a promise to temporarily admit to the United States large numbers of refugees.” The Americans really didn’t cover themselves with glory on this issue, but this has never been a perfect country, while it may be fair to say that it has been the world’s best hope. Such is our world!

(Source: “The Conquerors” by Michael Beschloss)

1944 FDR on the Holocaust

FDR finally breaks his silence on the Holocaust and does so in a big way, though it is late in the season, March 24, 1944. He issues this statement in an Oval Office session with reporters.

_ _ _

“In one of the blackest crimes of all history - begun by the Nazis in the day of peace and multiplied by them a hundred times in time of war - the wholesale, systematic murder of the Jews of Europe goes on unabated every hour.... None who participates in these acts of savagery shall go unpunished....

"Hitler is committing these crimes against humanity in the name of the German people. I am asking every German and every person … everywhere under Nazi domination to show the world by his action that in his heart he does not share these insane criminal desires. Let him hide these pursued victims, help them to get over their borders and do what he can to save them from the Nazi hangman.”

-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt

_ _ _

As Beschloss relates, the active response of the administration to this problem remained retarded. For instance, the President vetoed “a suggestion that the statement include a promise to temporarily admit to the United States large numbers of refugees.” The Americans really didn’t cover themselves with glory on this issue, but this has never been a perfect country, while it may be fair to say that it has been the world’s best hope. Such is our world!

(Source: “The Conquerors” by Michael Beschloss)

Infinity of Dreams

Here is another romantic reflection on the death of Amy Winehouse, this one going back to the source of our knowlege on suicide, Emile Durkheim. Again, it is something with which even your basic bottom-feeder loser can identify, that sense of not being grounded in the living world, as the days and years waft by in a mist of dream and sorrow, in a way that I imagine is more true than of millionaire entertainers.
_ _ _

Emile Durkheim, the founding father of sociology, in his great work, “Suicide,” published at the end of the 19th century, drew attention to the phenomenon of “anomie.” Society is held together and sustained, he argued, by a network of norms — largely unstated rules of behavior. Suicides, he argued, tend to suffer from anomie, or normlessness: they float free from the life-belt of rules and regulations, and often sink.

Durkheim characterized “romantic anomie”, in particular as an “infinity of dreams” doomed to be forever in conflict with the reality principle, and potentially fatal.

-- Andy Martin at The New York Times

Infinity of Dreams

Here is another romantic reflection on the death of Amy Winehouse, this one going back to the source of our knowlege on suicide, Emile Durkheim. Again, it is something with which even your basic bottom-feeder loser can identify, that sense of not being grounded in the living world, as the days and years waft by in a mist of dream and sorrow, in a way that I imagine is more true than of millionaire entertainers.
_ _ _

Emile Durkheim, the founding father of sociology, in his great work, “Suicide,” published at the end of the 19th century, drew attention to the phenomenon of “anomie.” Society is held together and sustained, he argued, by a network of norms — largely unstated rules of behavior. Suicides, he argued, tend to suffer from anomie, or normlessness: they float free from the life-belt of rules and regulations, and often sink.

Durkheim characterized “romantic anomie”, in particular as an “infinity of dreams” doomed to be forever in conflict with the reality principle, and potentially fatal.

-- Andy Martin at The New York Times