In 2006, I bought Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's first book Freakonomics and, like the four million other people who bought the book, thought it was excellent. It was full of originality with chapters on why parents disadvantage their children with bad names and why crack dealers live with their mothers. For this reason (plus the fact that I spent $30 and drove a total of 3 hours), I had high expectations when I went to see the pair in Seattle last night. Sadly, I left feeling that Levitt and Dubner seem to be suffering from a bad case of overexposure.
I should have seen the writing on the walls of Town Hall. For one, their latest book has the title of their old book in its title -- for someone seeking novelty, a sequel is not one's best bet. Furthermore, the talk was structured in that awful way that attendance required buying a copy of the book (hence the $30 price tag; strike two). And nothing could save Levitt and Dubner from the corny radio show host's introduction and on-stage interview (it turned out to only be a Q&A, not an official talk). All the event lacked was a theme song.
Their two man show was too relaxed and too predictable. Predictable? How can two men who argue (poorly -- according to a letter published at RealClimate.org by Geophysical Science professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert) in favor of geoengineering global cooling be predictable? I think they thought the tension around 'global cooling' would predictably sell books and talks. Dubner spoke of the prostitution market with similarly coy looks.
I fear their sophistication was overshadowed by flippancy. For evidence, Levitt spoke about global cooling garden hoses to the sky, proposed by Nathan Myhrvold of Bellevue's own Intellectual Ventures (who was not in attendance), the same way Cousteau talked about colonizing the oceans by the year 2000 (note: we did not accomplish this).
I always consider a speaker in three categories: Are they likable? Are they credible? Are they critical? Levitt and Dubner are passing in the credible category since they have the two books and Levitt does respectable and compelling economics research. But their talk was only slightly critical (mostly of car seats for toddlers ages 2 to 6) and the duo was strangely unlikeable despite their smiles and anecdotes. Maybe a theme song would help...
My review of Brad Matsen's new book Jacques Cousteau: The Sea King is out today at SEED Magazine today (the SEED graphic is so cool). In reviewing the book two things struck me: 1) that I knew actually very little about a man who is considered a founding father of marine conservation and 2) that there had to be a reason for my ignorance (other than the obvious). My hypothesis is that his tumultuous personal life, particularly the loose strings left at death, has contributed to why the Cousteau legacy is fading. See if you agree.
A trawler off of Japan capsized as its three man crew tried to haul in their net containing dozens of huge Nomura jellyfish. The three men were rescued but the boat apparently sank. Read the full story in The Telegraph.
Maya Lin, the architect behind the Vietnam memorial in Washington D.C. among other endeavors, thought she would not be making any more memorials. But her latest and last memorial focuses on the loss of biodiversity using animal sounds and is called "What is missing?". The interactive project is newly installed at the California Academy of Sciences and is designed to show us what we've lost and what we stand to lose. Listen to her talking about her listening cones as a wake up call for humanity, which will be installed in many science museums around the world, at On Point at NPR. Keep a close ear on minute 8, where Maya Lin uses the term shifting baselines, showing its increasing popularity as a concept (and for the bit that follows on how she gave up sushi grade tuna):
I think scientists call is 'shifting baselines'. I don't think people really understand how rich this land used to be and if we try to prevent it, there's a lot we can do...it's really a wake up call.
The new listening cone on display designed by architect and environmentalist Maya Lin.
It's no wonder that the most recent Pew report finds that belief in rising temperatures is down. As Jim Hoggan explains in his new book Climate Cover-Up, the media and the public it serves are awash in a corporate conspiracy to undermine the science of climate change, the corporate buyout of politicians, and corporate greenwashing.
Hoggan deals very well with the 'controversy' (i.e. there isn't one) and also shows some of the problematic issues between how corporations and scientists communicate (many of Hoggan's climate deniers are featured in Randy Olson's Sizzle, too). Yes, the book has the quaint, conversational tone that betrays its blogosphere beginnings. But it equally makes you appreciate the blogosphere by showing how scientists writing blogs have had a voice and a hand in uncovering conspiracy after corporate conspiracy. With all of this intentionally misleading information to keep track of, it comes as no surprise we have become a bunch of confused frogs in boiling water.
It might sound odd, but I found a lot of hope in Climate Cover-Up. As Hoggan explains the machinery and enticing offers that have led to a coalition of climate deniers (who most often lack legitimate background in science), I wound up asking myself not about why scientists had been coerced into joining the corporate move to cloud the market with confusion over climate change, but why more had not joined. And I wound up feeling that, on the whole, climate scientists were a ferociously ethical lot with deep convictions about their research, even in the face of lucrative temptation.
As part of the solution to the climate confusion, Hoggan, toward the end of his book (p. 164), writes about how we should all be vigilant fact-checkers:
If someone tells you to be skeptical, be skeptical of them. For that matter, be skeptical of me. Search out credible corroboration for everything you read or hear, looking always to the credentials and the economic interests of those who are offering easy answers.
Taking this to heart, there was one part of Climate Cover-Up that left me uneasy. Early on (p. 9), Hoggan, unhappy with the stance scientist Freeman Dyson has taken as a "civil heretic", wrote:
He has no background in climate science, having done no research whatever - ever - on atmospheric physics or on climate modeling. Even in theoretical physics, his area of expertise, his greatest contributions date to the late 1940s and early 1950s.
I had the great fortune of meeting Freeman Dyson when he gave a talk at Seattle Town Hall (I even wrote a little piece about it). I felt that based on what I knew of him (including reading his excellent book Disturbing the Universe) that Hoggan's claim could not be true. In fact, if one puts into Google scholar the three words "Freeman Dyson carbon", the first entry that pops up is his 1977 paper published in the journal Energy titled: "Can we control carbon dioxide in the atmosphere".
In the 1970s, Dyson was writing on the use of trees to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions.
In a book that lauds accuracy so loudly, a misstep such as this so early on can be fatal. Hoggan is great at taking on the junk scientists. But Freeman Dyson is not one of them. I am not arguing that Dyson is necessarily right (or that he has handled the media well). I am merely arguing that Freeman Dyson does have a basis for joining in the discussion (and any claim to the contrary could have easily been fact-checked). For that reason, Dyson is probably a bad early target for Hoggan, who should have stuck to the corporations (worthy of his energy), rather than making false claims about a venerable scientist. Climate Cover-Up recovers from this slip up but, as the old African proverb goes, one falsehood can spoil a thousand truths.
Oliver Morton wrote a delightful book all about photosynthesis called Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet, which I reviewed earlier this year for Search Magazine (R.I.P.) under the title "A Song for the Heartless". One of my favorite passages in the book beautifully explains the difference between art and science:
Discoveries feel determined. They are there to be made, and if one person doesn't, another will. This doesn't lessen the achievement; indeed it can give it spice. The thought that 'this is the way the world is--and I am the first to see it as such' is an intoxicating one. It is not unique to science- a poet may have the same feeling, or a painter- but the scientist who feels this way has the feeling in full measure, because he knows that it is in the nature of science that what he first sees as a truth will, if he is right, eventually be received as such universally. It will change the way the world is seen by everyone. No artistic insight can make this claim so universally. But the other side of this power is that a truth we accept as truly universal loses the need for an author. It becomes part of the way the world is, regardless of who saw it first, and in time the identity of whoever it may have been who first looked out from that particular peak in Darien is lost.
Because it is so beautifully concocted, it is tempting to digest every last drop of Mark Slouka's delicious potion ("Dehumanized" published last month in Harper's) without questioning the recipe. That Slouka pits capitalism (or, to be more specific, the puerile, corporate-driven aspects of capitalism) against citizenry was a well articulated but obvious face-off. More subtle (and noxious in its subtlety) was the claim that somehow math and science better equip students for lives as capitalist droids. Here's Slouka:
It troubles me because there are many things "math and science" do well, and some they don't. And one of the things they don't do well is democracy. They have no aptitude for it, no connection to it, really. Which hasn't prevented some in the sciences from arguing precisely the opposite, from assuming even this last, most ill-fitting mantle, by suggesting that science's spirit of questioning will automatically infect the rest of society.
In fact, it's not so. Science, by and large, keeps to its reservation, which explains why scientists tend to get in trouble only when they step outside the lab. That no one has ever been sent to prison for espousing the wrong value for the Hubble constant is precisely to the point. The work of democracy involves espousing those values that in a less democratic society would get one sent to prison. To maintain its "sustainable edge," a democracy requires its citizens to actually risk something, to test the limits of the acceptable; the "trajectory of capability-building" they must devote themselves to, above all others, is the one that advances the capability for making trouble. If the value you're espousing is one that could never get anyone, anywhere, sent to prison, then strictly democratically speaking you're useless.
A failed education, deficient in either the arts or the sciences, is likely to lead to that modern default. Does science acquiesce to the establishment? Nobody could say 'yes' without Galileo, Einstein, or the more timely Richard Dawkins being offered as quick contradictory evidence.
Slouka need not place math and science opposite the humanities on some sort of millennium battlefield. Chekhov was a doctor, Nabokov a lepidopterist, Steinbeck the best friend of marine biologist Doc Ricketts. Both the humanities and sciences are poised to encourage rational thought and creative thinking, close friends of citizenry, and it is going to take everything both sides have got in the real fight against infantilization and corporate culture.
What if you could gamble for a good cause? Why not build a casino where the profits go to conservation?
The idea came to me last night while watching a BBC documentary on gambling with Louis Theroux (see preview below). The segment features a woman who has lost $4 million over the last 7 years (don't worry, she says she had fun doing it) and a Canadian mattress man who lost somewhere over $250,000 in one weekend. Imagine if these people could lose their money and know that it ultimately wound up going toward a good cause rather than in the pockets of already rich casino owners?
Yes, some NGO would have to abandon a few scruples for such an undertaking (imagine a giant panda next to the Sphinx in Las Vegas). But I wonder if gamblers would have less sense of guilt or defeat if their losses went to a good cause? According to Stewart Brand in the excellent book The Clock of the Long Now:
One of the least reported, least reflected upon trends of the late twentieth century had been the rise of gambling. Growing at a rate of about 20 percent per year through the 1990s in the United States, the amount annually spent on legal gambling passed $700 billion in 1998. About 8 percent of that went to the "house"--$56 billion in profits, bigger than the domestic film and music industries combined. Instead of curtailing the game government joined it, actively teaching citizens to bet unthinkingly. States with lotteries went from one in 1964 to thirty-seven in 1997. The number of addicted gamblers increased accordingly, along with the usual crime, broken families, and suicides. The gaming industry has become a powerful political lobby, buying government acquiescence and media silence.
Let's put some of that casino money toward conservation...
**Update (October 27, 2009): While they are not casinos, apparently the Dutch postcode lottery and the UK postcode lottery are two gambling systems that support local charities.
Now I know Obama is a man of the people but there are people out there who put a lot of energy into that world uninhabited by humans--the oceans. Why couldn't some of that $787 billion in stimulus dollars be spent on marine reserves? Better yet, how about an 'ocean tax' on the $20 billion in bonuses those douchebag Wall Street bankers gave themselves amidst an economic crisis where Americans are losing their jobs and their homes (homes many of those institutions haphazardly financed)?
Marine reserves are not only important in a thriving economy. WIth less than 1% of the global ocean protected, the U.S. should be a leader in showing that marine protection can happen in good times and bad. We should not allow the designation of new marine reserves should not wane under this administration. Please, Obama: don't do us like that.
In 2006, I bought Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's first book Freakonomics and, like the four million other people who bought the book, thought it was excellent. It was full of originality with chapters on why parents disadvantage their children with bad names and why crack dealers live with their mothers. For this reason (plus the fact that I spent $30 and drove a total of 3 hours), I had high expectations when I went to see the pair in Seattle last night. Sadly, I left feeling that Levitt and Dubner seem to be suffering from a bad case of overexposure.
