Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Night-Blooming Cereus
If Dr. Seuss ever wrestled with existential dread – and I have no reason to think he did – he might have come up with the night blooming cereus.
Some of its long, scalloped leaves grow from stems, sure, but some of them just start up in the middle of other leaves, like an arm growing out of a back. Roots grow from leaf surfaces, sometimes upwards.
It’s a cactus, which I suppose should excuse some odd behavior. On its own in the desert it will dry up and look like so many dead sticks until it gets some water. In our house, it’s green and creepy all year round.
Once a year, or once a decade, or once in some long period of time, it produces – at night, hence the name – one spectacular flower, which lasts for a day. Turning this into metaphor is left as an exercise for the student.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Leaves of Grass
As I dug out crabgrass, raked in topsoil, and planted grass seed in our tiny scraggly front yard this past weekend, I remembered something I said to a friend when I was probably 20 and quite possibly stoned: “But what if later on we get trapped by, you know, lawns and shit.”
I don’t know about trapped, but I sure did spend a lot of the weekend with lawns and shit – well, manure, anyway.
Apparently not as much as a lot of American householders, though. According to Wired, 50,000 square miles of the continental US is lawn – roughly the total corn acreage in Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska combined. (Or, if this is for some reason easier to visualize, the land area of Nicaragua.)
On balance, this lawn mania is probably not a good thing for the planet. True, grass absorbs carbon dioxide, but then there’s all the fertilizer, weed killer, and water for irrigation. And don’t get me started on power lawn mowers.
I’m not planning on fertilizing or weed killing, I’ll start forgetting about watering pretty soon, and I use a hand mower, but I’m not off the hook: it will take a few years of carbon dioxide absorption to make up for the gas burned in trucking from Maine to my local Home Depot the half dozen bags of topsoil I spread. (Incidentally, “dirt cheap” at Home Depot is $1.59 for a 40 pound bag, although there is a lot of water in that dirt.)
I don’t know about trapped, but I sure did spend a lot of the weekend with lawns and shit – well, manure, anyway.
Apparently not as much as a lot of American householders, though. According to Wired, 50,000 square miles of the continental US is lawn – roughly the total corn acreage in Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska combined. (Or, if this is for some reason easier to visualize, the land area of Nicaragua.)
On balance, this lawn mania is probably not a good thing for the planet. True, grass absorbs carbon dioxide, but then there’s all the fertilizer, weed killer, and water for irrigation. And don’t get me started on power lawn mowers.
I’m not planning on fertilizing or weed killing, I’ll start forgetting about watering pretty soon, and I use a hand mower, but I’m not off the hook: it will take a few years of carbon dioxide absorption to make up for the gas burned in trucking from Maine to my local Home Depot the half dozen bags of topsoil I spread. (Incidentally, “dirt cheap” at Home Depot is $1.59 for a 40 pound bag, although there is a lot of water in that dirt.)
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Wet wet wet
Though 32 days and 32 nights short of Biblical proportions, it has nevertheless been seriously wet around here. It rained every day from last Tuesday through this Tuesday, and although the sun was out earlier today, it’s clouding over now.
Apparently there’s been only one death attributed to the rains and flooding, but I have to believe that depression has been on the rise. If this was the fundamental climate of the planet, would human life have evolved? Or would we simply have said “Fuggedaboudit” and collectively checked out as soon as we achieved sufficient consciousness to realize that everything was going to be damp and moldy forever?
Apparently there’s been only one death attributed to the rains and flooding, but I have to believe that depression has been on the rise. If this was the fundamental climate of the planet, would human life have evolved? Or would we simply have said “Fuggedaboudit” and collectively checked out as soon as we achieved sufficient consciousness to realize that everything was going to be damp and moldy forever?
Monday, May 15, 2006
I don't know much about bling...
but I strongly suspect Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is wrong, and the hard drive is not "the new bling."
Nevertheless, the video is worth a couple of points for corporate wackiness. And apparently you can even download the MP3 version, if you're really taken with it.
Nevertheless, the video is worth a couple of points for corporate wackiness. And apparently you can even download the MP3 version, if you're really taken with it.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Other than human persons
I said hello to a neighbor and her two dogs the other morning when I was coming back from the gym, and I realized that I used a very different tone of voice addressing the dogs than addressing the woman: not condescending, or baby talk, or anything like that, but definitely more playful. Not a tone of voice which I would typically use with a human.
Which got me to thinking about the concept of "other than human persons," which I first encountered in reading an essay by A. Irving Hallowell called "Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View." At least according to Hallowell, an anthropologist, the Ojibwa have a grammatical and conceptual category of persons, that includes both human and other-than-human persons. This latter can include the sun, characters from myth and dreams, and what Westerners are trained to think of as "inanimate" objects. Hallowell cites an episode in which he was talking with an older Ojibwa man, trying to understand the concept of how stones can be in the animate grammatical class.
"Are all the stones we see about us here alive?" Hallowell asked him.
"He reflected a long while and then replied, 'No, but some are.' "
Of course, it's not like the West doesn't have other than human persons. In fact, the law has had to adopt the term "natural person" to distinguish flesh and blood human beings from entities like corporations and trusts, which are for some purposes treated like persons. And then, the US Constitution famously indicated that slaves constituted some different category of 60% personhood, at least for the purposes of apportioning representation.
So I'm willing to give the old Ojibwa guy's point of view a little thought.
Which got me to thinking about the concept of "other than human persons," which I first encountered in reading an essay by A. Irving Hallowell called "Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View." At least according to Hallowell, an anthropologist, the Ojibwa have a grammatical and conceptual category of persons, that includes both human and other-than-human persons. This latter can include the sun, characters from myth and dreams, and what Westerners are trained to think of as "inanimate" objects. Hallowell cites an episode in which he was talking with an older Ojibwa man, trying to understand the concept of how stones can be in the animate grammatical class.
"Are all the stones we see about us here alive?" Hallowell asked him.
"He reflected a long while and then replied, 'No, but some are.' "
Of course, it's not like the West doesn't have other than human persons. In fact, the law has had to adopt the term "natural person" to distinguish flesh and blood human beings from entities like corporations and trusts, which are for some purposes treated like persons. And then, the US Constitution famously indicated that slaves constituted some different category of 60% personhood, at least for the purposes of apportioning representation.
So I'm willing to give the old Ojibwa guy's point of view a little thought.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
A Cruise Missile in Every Garage
If you have an inner 12-year old boy, show him this site: guy in New Zealand says he can build a cruise missile for $5,000. If you have an actual, external 12-year old boy, keep him the hell away from it.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd
We inherited our lilac bush from the previous owners of the house, and haven’t done much for it besides every year or so hack back the encroaching forsythia – an aggressive hegemon if ever there w
as one – and some suckery vine that threatens to strangle everything. For this neglect it sometimes, as this year, rewards us beyond what we merit. (“Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?.” Hamlet, II, ii) In some future release Blogger will doubtless let me post the scent.
But getting back to Whitman, I was never a close student of this poem, but the timing always puzzled me. I never saw a lilac blooming anytime near April 15, the date Lincoln died. (Lincoln’s death: Income Tax Day. They’d like you to think that’s a coincidence.) Now granted I was living in USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 6A or thereabouts when I first read it, and spring comes a good deal sooner in Washington.
But another variable is whether spring came earlier or later in 1865 than it does now. Research using time series from 1959-1993 of the date when lilac blossoms are first observed concludes that in fact spring in much of the northeast has been coming earlier by as much as 5-6 days over the period. Which is great in terms of smelling the lilacs, but that’s a worrisome amount of change over a very short span of time.
as one – and some suckery vine that threatens to strangle everything. For this neglect it sometimes, as this year, rewards us beyond what we merit. (“Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?.” Hamlet, II, ii) In some future release Blogger will doubtless let me post the scent.But getting back to Whitman, I was never a close student of this poem, but the timing always puzzled me. I never saw a lilac blooming anytime near April 15, the date Lincoln died. (Lincoln’s death: Income Tax Day. They’d like you to think that’s a coincidence.) Now granted I was living in USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 6A or thereabouts when I first read it, and spring comes a good deal sooner in Washington.
But another variable is whether spring came earlier or later in 1865 than it does now. Research using time series from 1959-1993 of the date when lilac blossoms are first observed concludes that in fact spring in much of the northeast has been coming earlier by as much as 5-6 days over the period. Which is great in terms of smelling the lilacs, but that’s a worrisome amount of change over a very short span of time.
