Year of the Jerk and Other Notes

I'm cleaning up my bookmarks for the month, so in no particular order:

A Stanford professor promoting his book speculates on why 2017 is the Year of the Jerk, and other Peak Asshole observations.  At the very least, an entertaining read and another pressure release from overboiling outrage.

The recent fuss over the current CIA director claiming erroneously that the "intelligence community" believes the Russian interference in 2016 had no impact on the outcome, can be viewed in the context of an earlier observation made in late September by the former director of National Intelligence James Clapper about the current White House incumbent: "Our intelligence community assessment did, I think, serve to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory in the election."

Dan Rather reflects on the practice of journalism and his journalistic career, particularly in covering segregation and the Civil Rights movement, in this interview.

Department of Ignorance: An eye-opening expose of scams against seniors;  a description of the role of social media bots in the 2016 Russian cyberspace invasion, and bots as an ongoing problem.  Not sure I still understand it all.

Other tech: another of several recent apocalyptic pieces on smartphones.  That was the Guardian, here again is the Atlantic's, which has been on its top five most popular pieces for weeks.

The Atlantic also has been following the Russian invasion through social media angle--in this story and more recently in this one.  Meanwhile, while denying Russian influence, Homemade Hitler himself bragged that social media won him the 2016 election.

But it wasn't just social media. A more recent and largely overlooked study that more than suggests the state of Wisconsin swung R in 2016 directly due to that state's successful voter suppression.

While the first attempt to force enforcement of the constitutional emoluments clause moves towards court consideration, more evidence surfaces of corruption in the current administration, in the cabinet, and once again, the White House incumbent.

Meanwhile, On Planet Earth:

Everybody has their sensitive spots, their areas most prone to denial.  One of mine is the fragility of the ocean.  The news there (such as this latest study) is so ominous that it undercuts any long term hope for the human future.  The impacts of the climate crisis in heating the oceans as well as effects of unbelievable pollution (including garbage) are stuff I really don't want to think much about, it's so impossibly sad.

Add to that mix speculation on the effects on the ocean of an H-Bomb explosion, as North Korea is threatening to do.

While the media and public officials struggle to come to terms with future sea level rise etc. that so far are happening slowly, there's the ongoing evidence of changes promising an ominous future.  Earlier this month there was this report on the effects of carbon pollution in reducing nutrients in food plants--an invisible but ultimately scary effect.  I suspect there are other factors involved as well, such as the heavy use of pesticides in industrial agriculture.

More recently, there's a study on flying insects.  Declines of bees and butterflies have alarmed people, but it's apparently worse: a study conducted across Germany shows a nearly 80% decline in flying insects from 25 years ago.  You can't lose more than three quarters of flying insects and maintain ecological balance--not to mention the food supply--for very long.  Here's one take on that, here's another.  Here's the study itself--it seems quite extensive.  And here's an evaluation on the study's dire significance in context of other studies that tend to confirm it.

Cultural notes:

Nice to see an update on the activities and whereabouts of David Kippen, who was my first editor at the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, and a much missed book columnist in the city.

Article about this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Kazuo Ishiguro, who--more than incidentally--is the first winner of that prize to have ever taken a creative writing class.

A surprise Nobel Prize in psychology for researchers studying biorhythms--the human "body clock."  I did a piece for New Times magazine in the 1970s on biorhythms, specifically the Lark and Owl (morning v. night people), which the accompanying image by Dick Palulian illustrated.

 Amazing that 30 years later, this research is still obscure and underfunded, as this story suggests.  It seemed to me then and still does that this research is far more robust and relevant than much of the more publicized of what passes for psychological or brain research these days.

Among the deaths of the once well-known registered recently, one went by very fast.  Connie Hawkins was both a virtuoso and pioneer of how basketball has been played for the past forty years or so, especially from the 70s through the 90s.  Though he finally made it to the NBA, his is also another story of some of the best years taken away by racial discrimination.

He also played a year for the Pittsburgh Rens in the ill-fated ABL in the early 60s, and won the league MVP, then for the Pittsburgh Pipers in the ABA in the late 60s, leading them to a championship. These were the only two pro basketball teams ever in Pittsburgh, and neither was well supported, especially the Rens.

I saw Hawkins play once in person, in what turns out to be the only pro basketball game I've ever seen live.  And it was only because our high school played the warm-up game before the Rens at the Civic Arena.  There were more people there for the high school games than stayed or came to see the pros, including one of the all-time greats of the game of basketball, Connie Hawkins.

An intelligent exploration of the music and career of one of the best songwriters and best voices of our generation, too often overlooked: Joni Mitchell.

I was much amused by this article about listening to one of the rare performances of Eric Satie's "Vexations"--rare because the same short piano passage is repeated for 19 hours.  I was present for such a performance in 1970 at a summer artists colony in Cummington, Mass. I attended.

 A tag team of pianists played in the main hall, as I recall.  The stage was just the piano and some candles, which added to the strange solemnity, the holiness, of the event.  Listeners came and went, and though we sat in chairs, I retain a feeling they were church pews.  I wasn't present for the entire 19 hours though I was for the beginning, some of the middle, and the end.  It was an experience I am grateful I had.  Not quite on an LSD level, but of that order, like prolonged meditation.  Also one of the few community moments in a fractious summer.

Finally...

On those old news broadcasts I used to watch, they tended to at least try to end on an upbeat note.  So as counter-evidence to suggest we're not all jerks (at least not all the time) and that social media might be good for something, there's this New Yorker story about a cover image--a painting of three female faces peering down at a patient undergoing surgery-- that inspired a Twitter hashtag to collect photos reproducing the image but with real medical people--women and minorities.

There are photos in the hundreds on there now.  I suppose there might be some dubious people among them, but just looking at most of them inspires confidence in their kindness and competence.  That their faces can be seen around the world now is a decent counterbalance to what is commonly shoved in our faces.