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Collection: Weekend Reading

Weekend Reading 3/8/13

by

Eric

The long arc of human history has yielded such a diversity of cultures that it’s usually impossible to say that any one of them is truly “the most” or “the best” at anything.  Yet it’s clear to me that when Google Glass comes to market, Western civilization will be crowned the most annoying.

Matthew Yglesias delivers a well-deserved skewering to the defenders of his city’s parking mandates.

Inspired by an evening encounter with a coyote in his neighborhood, Chuck Wolfe meditates on the relationship between nature and cities.

Hugo Chavez got at least one thing right when he pointed out: “If the climate was a bank [the US] would already have saved it.”

Finally, it’s too bad I’m married because it means I missed my opportunity to deliver the greatest breakup line ever: “This may feel cold, but there’s nothing cold about well-reasoned analysis.”

Anna

Weekend Reading 3/1/13

by

Anna

Get this: The more chocolate a population consumes, the more Nobel laureates it has? That may not be a direct correlation, but a different study suggests chocolate—or cocoa to be precise—might boost brain power. Researchers found that cognitive function in elderly people with mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to Alzheimer’s disease was improved by ingesting high levels of natural compounds found in cocoa called flavanols. I really love those flavanols!

But before you reach for the candy jar, some not so sweet news: “Tragically for chocoholics, most methods of processing cocoa remove many of the flavanols found in the raw plant. Even dark chocolate, touted as the “healthy” option, can be treated such that the cocoa darkens while flavanols are stripped.”

And, here’s more bad news for sweet tooths like myself. Pointing to the link between added sugar and diabetes, Mark Bittman writes, “Sugar is indeed toxic. It may not be the only problem with the Standard American Diet, but it’s fast becoming clear that it’s the major one.” He calls sugar “the closest thing to causation and a smoking gun that we will see.”

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Weekend Reading 2/22/13

by

Alan

I’ve had little to contribute to weekend reading of late, because I decided to read fewer articles and more books—hence my recent entry about an 800-page biography of Winston Churchill. And today’s: Eight years late, I finally read John Vaillant’s astoundingly gripping and deeply illuminating The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed (W.W. Norton). It has joined the short list of books I consider exceptional works of place-focused nonfiction about the Northwest, along with Tim Egan’s The Good Rain, Sally Tisdale’s Stepping Westward, and Ivan Doig’s Winter Brothers. (What else goes on your list in this category? Tell me in comments!)

The Golden Spruce is a tragedy in the Greek sense. It’s the tale of a real-world, larger-than-life woodsman named Grant Hadwin. Born to privilege in a suburb of Vancouver, BC, he flees urban life for the lumber camps and endless wilds of British Columbia’s north. Then, after years of legendary wilderness exploits, he gradually goes insane, gnawed hollow by the contradiction of living off of a timber industry that is desecrating the most magnificent forest on the planet, the place that makes him whole and human. In the end, his mad rage against this earth-ruining world pushes him to an implausible and peculiar act of sabotage. He cuts down the most special and sacred of trees. It makes no sense; or it makes perfect sense. Is he insane or are we? (Hadwin’s physical prowess in the woods reminds me of only one other person ever, the fictional he-man super-logger Hank Stamper in Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, which is arguably the greatest work of place-based Cascadian fiction and is also a tragedy on a grand scale that involves madness, death, rain, and giant trees.)

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Weekend Reading 2/15/13

by

Clark

Last week was a big week in science. Bionic eyes. 3-D stem cell printers. The possibility of billions of earth-like planets in the galaxy. And a reconstruction of the first placental mammal. It’s a big, interesting world out there, folks.

Lots of research has shown that marriage is good for you. But this study suggests that it may just be companionship, and not marriage per se, that boosts wellbeing; and that there are few measurable differences between cohabitation and marriage. More quotes here.

On the incompatibility of cars and cities. From the article:

In the early 1960s – when highway construction was at its peak and cars were just beginning to leave their mark – a handful of critics predicted there would be irreconcilable tensions between vibrant cities and their motorized inhabitants. Nearly 50 years later, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania published research validating this idea.

Alan

I enjoyed this profile of the uber-wonk Ezra Klein in The New Republic.

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Weekend Reading 2/8/13

by

Eric

Northwest cities are, for the most part, too young to have ruins. Seattle has a couple of good ones though, including the soon-to-be-demolished “ramps to nowhere” and Gasworks Park, about which Knute Berger had a good piece this week.

Andrew Sullivan posted a fascinating world map depicting policies on same-sex marriage. There’s a stark divide between many of the wealthy nations and Latin America on the one hand and most of the Islamic and African countries on the other.

At USA Today, Duncan Black argued that it is vitally important to expand and strengthen social security benefits in light of the rather dire savings picture for many Americans who hope to retire soon. I’ve been enjoying him take up this argument at Eschaton, in part because it strikes me as an almost perfect confluence between sound public policy and a political smash hit for progressives.

At the Oregonian, retired CEO Eric Strid scoffs at the notion that coal exports are a benefit to the Northwest’s economy:

I am convinced the coal companies’ arguments as “job creators” are smoke and mirrors, with an emphasis on the former. My former company has more regular employees than all of the proposed coal export projects combined, and we didn’t create an environmental disaster to do it.

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Weekend Reading 2/1/13

by

Alan

I wrote some years ago about the state Department of Revenue’s bone-headed decision to tax car-sharing the same as conventional car rentals. Portland exempted car-sharing from the rental car tax, and Washington did too… for a while. Then, in 2007, DoR revised its earlier approach, under pressure from the rental-car lobby. Now, every time you or I grab a Zipcar or Car2Go or RelayRides vehicle in Washington, we get hit with retail-sales tax PLUS rental-car tax. In Seattle, the combined tax burden is almost 20 percent. Car sharing is still a great deal, but it’s preposterous that public policy penalizes what it should encourage. Car-sharers drive dramatically fewer miles, pollute less, take up fewer parking spaces, and spend their money on other things than their cars—things that tend to help the local economy more. Washington’s policy gives Seattle the tenth highest car-sharing tax rate in the United States, according to this article summarizing a study of cities across the United States.

Serena

I’m a sucker for slick, solidly messaged environmental ads. (Surprised? Me neither.) That’s why Waterkeeper Alliance’s new ads, short and long versions, had me hooked. And if the message alone isn’t enough to get you, perhaps you’d geek out for the messenger? It’s Edward James Olmos, of “Battlestar Galactica.”

Speaking of water, I’m joining the Taking on Water Challenge for the month of February. Each week features a postcard with a new water use reduction challenge. The winner, drawn from the participant pool, receives a home water conservation kit and a signed copy of Wendy Pabich’s new book, Taking on Water: How One Water Expert Challenged Her Inner Hypocrite, Reduced Her Water Footprint (without Sacrificing a Toasty Shower), and Found Nirvana.

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Weekend Reading 1/25/13

by

Anna:

This is from the Ringside Seat email I get from the American Prospect. The climate impact analogies are vivid and alarming: “Mother Jones follows climate-change dynamo Jason Box to Greenland’s ice sheet to learn that it’s halfway to snowcone and might go full slushie way ahead of schedule.”

Meanwhile, researchers are looking to fossil formations for clues from past climate changes to help predict sea level rise due to man-made global warming.

The real story about solar energy isn’t necessarily being told by the mainstream media. Media Matters debunks common myths, one by one, concluding that we’re in the midst of a solar energy boom.

Are you one of Seattle’s thrift store fashionistas? The Seattle Times and local fashion blogger Dana Landon just launched a contest for the best secondhand styles.

Alan:

I spent Sunday marveling at the miracles of nature in the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. So I was chastened to read Thomas Lovejoy’s NYT op-ed and be reminded me that that place—and its creatures—are “dead men walking.” Climate change will likely raise sea level enough to flood virtually the entire refuge. Lovejoy, whom I had the honor to meet some years ago, is right on the money in this piece. What worries me most is that while there is a global movement to slow climate change, efforts worldwide to save the diversity of life on Earth do not add up to a movement yet.

A humorous and playful but ultimately deadly true commentary about the North American way of death: the way we segregate the aging and the ill from a youth- and health-idolizing culture.

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Weekend Reading 1/18/13

by

Eric:

Okay readers, I could use your help here. I have not, so far, been able to convince Alan that this is a worthwhile professional development opportunity for me.

Al Jazeera has a good segment on the growth of bicycling in Seattle.

Is fish oil really just snake oil?

I’ve got two coal-related pieces to recommend. First, at Crosscut, Daniel M. Kammen and Michael Riordan have a good piece on the lousy job growth that the proposed coal export terminals would produce. Second, the fine folks at EarthFix (Bonnie Stewart and Amelia Templeton this time) rolled out another informative and timely contribution to the coal export conversation: “10 Things to Know About Coal Leasing on Public Land.”

I just finished streaming the second season of Portlandia on Netflix. I think this was my favorite sketch, particularly the very end.

Alan:

My favorite piece from Sightline Daily recently is by Seattle Times economic columnist Jon Talton. It covers a lot of ground about climate and how humans respond to change, but my favorite section was this, where he lays out his prescriptions:

Second is regaining effective self-government in the United States. This challenge goes beyond a partisan divide that is the worst since the eve of the Civil War. . . . an oligarchy has taken over our government. The “financial services industry.” The Military-Industrial Complex. Big Oil and King Coal. Highly consolidated industries that have created proto-monopolies and cartels. . . . they firmly control Congress and most state legislatures. They heavily influence regulation and the courts, gaming the system for their benefit and calling it “the free market.”

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Weekend Reading 1/11/13

by

Eric:

In the wake of the fiscal cliff debate, Public Policy Polling released (apparently serious?) survey results that are, hands down, the funniest opinion research I’ve ever seen. To wit:

When asked if they have a higher opinion of either Congress or a series of unpleasant or disliked things, voters said they had a higher opinion of root canals (32 for Congress and 56 for the dental procedure), NFL replacement refs (29-56), head lice (19-67), the rock band Nickelback (32-39), colonoscopies (31-58), Washington DC political pundits (34- 37), carnies (31-39), traffic jams (34-56), cockroaches (43-45), Donald Trump (42-44), France (37-46), Genghis Khan (37-41), used-car salesmen (32-57), and Brussels sprouts (23-69) than Congress.

Congress did manage to beat out telemarketers (45-35), John Edwards (45-29), the Kardashians (49-36), lobbyists (48-30), North Korea (61-26), the ebola virus (53-25), Lindsay Lohan (45-41), Fidel Castro (54-32), playground bullies (43-38), meth labs (60- 21), communism (57-23), and gonorrhea (53-28).

More importantly, statistics guru Nate Silver predicts that the Seahawks will not only beat Atlanta at home this weekend, but that they’ll go on to win the NFC championship and meet the Patriots in the Super Bowl. You can’t argue with Silver. He’s a genius.

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Weekend Reading 1/4/13

by

Eric:

I’m a bit late on this, but I have to point out Lummi fisherman Jay Julius’s blistering op-ed in the Bellingham Herald that explains his tribe’s opposition to the proposed coal terminal at Cherry Point.

I was riveted by Kevin Drum’s thoughtful exploration of the connection between lead exposure and crime rates. Particularly interesting is his estimate that full remediation of lead in homes and soil, while expensive, could yield a return on investment of roughly 20 to 1.

Anna:

This article from Reader Supported News about the NRA’s real motivations is a must read for anybody trying to make sense of gun laws and attitudes in America. Wait a second! It’s not about freedom or protection or the American way, it’s about making money for corporations. Follow the money, it always knows!

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is not spending millions of dollars per year to protect gun rights as much as it is protecting gun sales. Arms dealing, that’s where the money is. And that’s what justifies the length the NRA lobbyists go to, both at the federal and state level. The NRA has helped protect the questionable right of Americans to own firearms, but they have also helped to transform the United States into the most lucrative personal arms market in the world. Arms dealing in America only differs from drug dealing in three significant ways: it’s more profitable, it’s more lethal and it’s legal.

And as we test out our resolutions for 2013, here’s a metric for measuring those new behaviors. Smoking, eating broccoli, exercise, booze—we know some things are good for us and others are bad, but just how good and how bad? David Spiegelhalter, a professor of risk assessment at the University of Cambridge boils it down to 30-minute units. Smoke 2 cigarettes, lose 30 minutes of your life; exercise for 20 minutes, gain an hour.

Over time bad habits accelerate your aging, and good habits slow it down. “That seems to resonate with people,” Spiegelhalter says. “No one likes to get older faster.”

Is abortion an issue millennials care about? Stepping down as NARAL’s president, Nancy Keenan tells Salon it’s time a new generation leads. But she’s not sure they will.

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