Monthly Archives: June 2014

The US Chamber of Commerce and the SCOTUS: You'll want to see this.

The Constitutional Accountability Center has released it’s annual report The Corporate Court.

…Let’s begin with the numbers. This Term, the Chamber was involved in 17 cases overall—directly representing one of its member companies in Canning, litigating as a party in UARG, and filing amicus briefs in 15 other cases. The Chamber’s 17 cases represent just under a quarter of the total cases set down for argument this Term.

All told, the Chamber racked up a record of 11 wins and 5 losses—or a 69% winning percentage. (One of its cases—Mt. Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action—settled before oral argument.) That means that, since Samuel Alito succeeded Sandra Day O’Connor on the Court in January 2006, the Chamber has won 70% of its cases (85 wins and 36 losses), compared with only 43% in the late Burger Court (15 of 35 from 1981-1986) and 56% in the stable Rehnquist Court (45 of 80 from 1994-2005). …

First 2014 Atlantic Tropical Storm??? IMPORTANT UPDATE

Maybe yes, maybe no. Good chance, yes.

It is too early to call, but the blob I mentioned the other day has turned into a spiral and is starting to get organized. Forecasters at NOAA think there is an 80% chance this low pressure phenomenon will be a tropical storm by the 4th of July. They are also, somewhat vaguely, saying that it will move south, then northward, then northwest, which puts the storm off the coast of the US Mid-Atlantic or Southeast somewhere. Given that the storm is not moving in a consistent direction steered by well defined one directional forces, this should be very hard to predict this early.

This afternoon there should be an aircraft taking a closer look, assuming development continues. By tomorrow mid day, I suspect, we’ll know a lot more, between the collection of new data, the runs of more models, and the behavior of the proto-storm itself.

But yes, this could be Atlantic Storm 1, Arthur, a menacing off coast storm but almost certainly NOT a hurricane, as it will be moved too far north to really turn into one.

UPDATE: The NWS is now more certain about the disturbance turning into a Tropical Storm:

1. Shower and thunderstorm activity has increased in association with
a low pressure area located about 125 miles east of Melbourne,
Florida. Environmental conditions are becoming more conducive for
development
, and only a slight increase in organization would result
in the formation of a tropical depression
. This system is moving
southwestward at around and 5 mph but is expected to turn westward
tonight and northward by Wednesday near the east Florida coast. A
turn toward the northeast near the southeastern U.S. coast is
expected by Thursday. An Air Force Reserve reconnaissance aircraft
is en route to investigate the disturbance. If this system becomes
a tropical cyclone, a tropical storm watch could be required for
portions of the central or northern Atlantic coast of Florida.

* Formation chance through 48 hours…high…80 percent.
* Formation chance through 5 days…high…80 percent.

UPDATE 2 (Monday evening): Check out Paul Douglas’s blog at Star Tribune for details. It is still too early to have high confidence, but there is a good enough chance that there will be a named storm menacing the US Southeast/Mid Atlantic coast on or around the 4th that if you live in that area you might consider the waterproof bratwurst for your picnic.

For reference, here is the list of storm names for the 2014 Atlantic Hurricane Season:

Arthur
Bertha
Cristobal
Dolly
Edouard
Fay
Gonzalo
Hanna
Isaias
Josephine
Kyle
Laura
Marco
Nana
Omar
Paulette
Rene
Sally
Teddy
Vicky
Wilfred

Who Are The Most Influential African Americans, Ages 25-45?

The Root 100 2014 is seeking your nominations. DEADLINE IS MONDAY. They are

…just about ready to celebrate the innovators, the trailblazers and the influencers in the African-American community who have caught our attention in the past year. [They] will announce The Root 100 of 2014 and celebrate these 25-45-year-olds who are paving the way in politics, entertainment, business, the arts, social justice, science and sports. Right now, it’s your turn to submit nominations for those you think deserve this coveted honor.

There will be many well-known figures on the list, but, each year, The Root 100 seeks to recognize those whose accomplishments may have gone unacknowledged on a national level. Our honorees are ranked according to a scoring system that measures reach and substance. Last year, our No. 1 honoree was then-NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, with about-to-be U.S. Sen. Cory Booker in second place. Both men’s public profiles have changed, so stay tuned to see what happens in 2014.

Other 2013 honorees included MSNBC’s new host Joy-Ann Reid, chef Marcus Samuellsson and Assistant U.S. Attorney Randall Jackson.
We will spend the next weeks collecting names, debating our choices and putting all the names through the stringent criteria we use to determine the best of the best.
The deadline is June 30th for you to weigh in. Submit the names of those you believe are making a difference in the black community. Just fill out The Root 100 2014 nomination form below.

Go HERE to nominate. I suggest a STEM related person.

Jumping the Shark. Or not.

I propose that there are four five categories of TV series distinguished on the basis of how long they run and the quality, or lack thereof, of the show more or less objectively defined (to the extent that one can do that).

1: Shows that jumped the shark

31gNwOQP1BL._SX342_These are shows that become redundant, lose their writing quality, or for some other reason reach a point where they get bad. That point is, of course, the “Jumping-the-Shark” moment. The phrase “Jump the shark” of course comes from an episode of Happy Days when Fonzie, water skiing, jumps over a shark. That was apparently a bad episode and is thought to mark the decline of the show from something a lot of people liked to something that needed to end. But then it didn’t end.

Examples:

<li>Dexter</li>
<li>ER</li>
<li>Grey’s Anatomy</li>
<li>Happy Days</li>
<li>House</li>
<li>Lie to Me</li>
<li>Lost Girl</li>
<li>M.A.S.H.</li>
<li>Northern Exposure</li>
<li>Psych</li>
<li>The Cosby Show</li>
<li>Twin Peaks</li>
<li>Will & Grace</li>
<li>Fringe</li>
<li>Sherlock</li>

2: Shows that are inherently immortal(ish)

Martha-Jones-doctor-who-for-whovians-28291065-307-390These are shows that have a formula that allows them to remain high quality indefinitely, and for which the writing and directing and overall production value remains at high quality. It is hard to decide if a show that has been running for some time belongs in this category, or if they will someday jump the shark. But the examples given here have been on a long time and seem to lack sharks. The Simpsons, for example, has been running a very long time and last time I checked was still as funny as it ever was. Doctor Who, of course, regenerates, and the time element of the equation for that show is different for all other shows because on Doctor Who time is a wiggly wobbly timey wimey thing.

Examples:

<li>The Simpsons</li>

<li>Law and Order(s)</li>
<li>Doctor Who</li>
<li>The Big Bang Theory</li>
<li>Misfits</li>
<li>Son of Anarchy</li>
<li>That 70s show</li>
<li>Star Trek, original series</li>
<li>Red Dwarf</li>

<li>Futurama</li>

<li>Family Guy</li>

3: Shows that were killed ended during their prime

Primeval460 These are shows that might have been of category 1 or 2 above had they been allowed to continue, but were terminated while they were still good, but after a longish run. I like to think these shows would have been in category 2, but that certainly not need be the case. It is sad or disappointing when they do end, but that they were shut down while still good is actually a good thing even if it hurts a little.

Examples:

<li>MI 5</li>
<li>Eureka</li>
<li>Breaking Bad; Seinfeld</li>
<li>Primeval</li>
<li>The West Wing</li>
<li>The Dick Van Dyke Show</li>
<li>Moonlighting </li>
<li>Spartacus</li>
<li>six feet under</li>
  • Star Trek, original series
  • 4: Shows that die a young and undeserved death

    Bletchley_Circle-About-artThese are shows that has promise, were good, but for marketing or other reasons ended after one or two seasons even though they should not have. I believe it is necessary to have an arbitrary distinction between categories 3 and 4. I’m going to set that at a maximum of three seasons. I could be talked into four seasons.

    Examples:

  • Arrested Development
  • Deadwood
  • Firefly
  • House of Cards (if rumors are true that it will have only two seasons)
  • Kung Fu
  • Legend
  • My so-called life
  • Primeval US version
  • The Bletchley Circle
  • Torchwood (if we take 4 seasons as the cutoff)
  • Almost Human
  • Revolution
  • 5: Shows that die a young and richly deserved death

    tumblr_mkyjcvy2u01rprai1o1_500_by_aledunk99-d628gf3“These are mostly uninspired ripoffs of something that was successful a season or two earlier.” (John McKay) It is hard to find examples of these shows because they are obscure, and they may occupy a similar obscure space to gems that were also terminated early. In other words, for me, if I’ve not seen the show I can’t identify it as NOT having filled a niche somewhere. I’ve not seen any of the examples given here but they seem like good candidates.

    Examples:

    <li>Manimal</li>
    <li>Heil Honey I'm Home!</li>
    <li>Almost Human</li>
    <li>Carnivàle</li>
    

    Discussion

    A key feature of this nomenclature is the distinction between categories 3 and 4. In looking for examples of shows that ended way to early (after one or two seasons, mainly) I discovered that those who have talked about this on the internet seem to make no distinction between a show that runs 12 years and then ended but “we want it back” and one that runs only a few seasons. I think they are very different.

    Please enter your suggestions or complaints below. Not that there would ever be a difference of opinion about any of this.

    Climate Change Increases Wild Fires

    First let me check … are all those denialists who have been claiming that wild fires have become rare done talking yet?

    OK fine.

    Yes, depending on where you go and what you look at we are having a problem with wild fires in the US and elsewhere (i.e., Australia). Part of this is probably due to weather whiplash. Periods of heavier than usual rain means more fuel grows, periods of dry make the fuel ready to burn, maybe even add some extra windy conditions, and the fires are worse than usual. This leads to landslide conditions being worse later on when the unusual rains occur.

    Anyway, Climate Hawks Vote has taken note of this and made a meme, the picture above, that I thought you might want to see and share. Also, click here to see how media coverage in California is changing vis-a-vis wildfire and climate change.

    Atlantic Hurricane Season Teaser

    There is a stormy thing in the Atlantic that may become a Tropical Storm. It is really just a blob right now, but there is a roughly even chance that over the next two to five days it will form a tropical storm.

    No matter what, this blob will menace the US east coast, though it is way too early to say if this will be a big deal or not. It is not entirely clear which direction it will be moving in over the medium term. We will be keeping and eye on it.

    Evolution Book For Young Children: Grandmother Fish

    In a previous life (of mine) my father-in-law, an evolutionary biologist, kept an oil painting of a fish on the wall of the living room. At every chance he would point out, to visitors or to anyone else if there were no visitors, that he kept a portrait of his distant ancestor hanging in a prominent location, pointing to the oil painting. It was funny even the third or fourth time. It isn’t really true, of course, that this was his ancestor. It was a bass, more recently evolved to its present form than humans, I suspect. But it is true that the last common ancestor of humans and fish was a lot more like a fish than like a human.

    I know it is hard to find good books about evolution for kids, and it is even harder to find a book for really young kids. A book needs to be written for the audience, engaging, entertaining, and all that — it needs to be a good book — before it can also teach something. A book that teaches but sucks as a book doesn’t really teach much.

    Recently, Jonathan Tweet of Seattle Washington sent me a draft of a book he was working on that is such a thing, a good book that teaches about evolution and targeted to young kids. He had sent the book around to a number of experts for two reasons. First, he wanted to make sure he wasn’t saying anything wrong vis-a-vis evolution. Second, he wanted to make sure he got his facts straight at another level so he could provide useful and accurate footnotes for the adults who might read the book for the kids. I had a comment or two, but really, he already had his ducks in a row and the book, with the notes, was in good shape. It had evolved, as a project, very nicely.

    The book is: Grandmother Fish: a child’s first book of evolution. From his blurb:

    Grandmother Fish is the first book to teach evolution to preschoolers. While listening to the story, the child mimics the motions and sounds of our ancestors, such as wiggling like a fish or hooting like an ape. Like magic, evolution becomes fun, accessible, and personal. Grandmother Fish will be a full-size (10 x 8), full-color, 32-page, hardback book full of appealing animal illustrations, perfect for your bookshelf. US publishers consider evolution to be too “hot” a topic for children, but with your help we can make this book happen ourselves.

    Jonathan made a kick-starter to raise 12,000 to produce the book. He’s already reached that goal and is now edging towards the stretch goal of $20K.

    You can visit the kickstarter site HERE. You can download an early draft of the book. Personally, I plan to make this a Christmas gift for several friends and relatives who have kids the right age, assuming it is available by then. You can also see a several videos by the author and illustrator.

    You can go to the Kickstarter site now and invest in any one of several different products that will be sent to you.

    You may know of Tweet’s other work on Dungeons & Dragons and similar projects.

    I recommend the book, strongly. Thank you for writing it, Jonathan.

    Who Founded Greenpeace? Not Patrick Moore.

    Who are the founders of Greenpeace? Not Patrick Moore.

    Patrick Moore is a Hippie for Hire. He makes the claim that he co-founded Greenpeace, and charges a fee to show up at conferences or other venues, or sit on boards, to provide a story that anti-environmentalists, global warming deniers, and others, like to hear. The part where he takes your money to lie, as far as I can tell, is true. The part about how he co-founded Greenpeace is apparently not true.

    Here’s what Greenpeace has to say about Patrick Moore:

    Patrick Moore.  Did Patrick Moore found Greenpeace? Greenpeace says no.  They have evidence.  So no, he probably did not.
    Patrick Moore. Did Patrick Moore found Greenpeace? Greenpeace says no. They have evidence. So no, he probably did not.

    Patrick Moore, a paid spokesman for the nuclear industry, the logging industry, and genetic engineering industry, frequently cites a long-ago affiliation with Greenpeace to gain legitimacy in the media. Media outlets often either state or imply that Mr. Moore still represents Greenpeace, or fail to mention that he is a paid lobbyist and not an independent source…

    For more than 20 years, Mr. Moore has been a paid spokesman for a variety of polluting industries, including the timber, mining, chemical and the aquaculture industries. Most of these industries hired Mr. Moore only after becoming the focus of a Greenpeace campaign to improve their environmental performance. Mr. Moore has now worked for polluters for far longer than he ever worked for Greenpeace.

    Most importantly, given Patrick Moore’s insistence that he is a founder of Greenpeace, is this statement by the organization:

    Patrick Moore Did Not Found Greenpeace

    Patrick Moore frequently portrays himself as a founder or co-founder of Greenpeace, and many news outlets have repeated this characterization. Although Mr. Moore played a significant role in Greenpeace Canada for several years, he did not found Greenpeace. Phil Cotes, Irving Stowe, and Jim Bohlen founded Greenpeace in 1970. Patrick Moore applied for a berth on the Phyllis Cormack in March, 1971 after the organization had already been in existence for a year.

    Greenpeace even kept a copy of the letter Patrick Moore sent to them asking for a birth on a boat to engage in a nuclear protest, dated to long after the founding of Greenpeace. Here it is:

    patrick-moore-s-application-le_000001
    patrick-moore-s-application-le_000002patrick-moore-s-application-le_000003
    patrick-moore-s-application-le_000004

    How could Patrick Moore have founded Greenpeace if he wrote this letter?

    Media Matters addressed the question “Who is Patrick Moore?” and “Who Founded Greenpeace?” and “Did Patrick Moore Found Greenpeace?here. In that piece they discuss Patrick Moore’s anti-science and anti-environment stand on climate change. They note:

    Moore has repeatedly claimed that he left Greenpeace because their policies shifted to the radical left, saying for instance in his testimony, “I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific perspective.” But Greenpeace has a different view of the situation, saying “what Moore really saw was an opportunity for financial gain. Since then he has gone from defender of the planet to a paid representative of corporate polluters.” [U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, 2/25/14; Greenpeace, 10/10/08]

    This refers in part to the Greenpeace Statement on Patrick Moore:

    Patrick Moore often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental “expert” or even an “environmentalist,” while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance. He also exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson, usually taking positions that Greenpeace opposes.

    While it is true that Patrick Moore was a member of Greenpeace in the 1970s, in 1986 he abruptly turned his back on the very issues he once passionately defended. He claims he “saw the light” but what Moore really saw was an opportunity for financial gain. Since then he has gone from defender of the planet to a paid representative of corporate polluters.

    Patrick Moore promotes such anti-environmental positions as clearcut logging, nuclear power, farmed salmon, PVC (vinyl) production, genetically engineered crops, and mining. Clients for his consulting services are a veritable Who’s Who of companies that Greenpeace has exposed for environmental misdeeds, including Monsanto, Weyerhaeuser, and BHP Minerals.

    And so on.

    So, on answer to the question “Who Founded Greenpeace?” one accurate and truthful answer is “Not Patrick Moore.” In answer to the questions “Did Patrick Moore found Greenpeace?” or “Is Patrick Moore a co-founder of Greenpeace?” the answer is “no” to both.

    Minnesota's Amazing June Weather

    We are breaking all sorts of records here in Minnesota this June, and not the records for drought (or, for once, cold). It has been raining and storming a lot, and not just in one place as happens now and then. The rains have been widespread and intensive. The flood levels of most rivers are not breaking records because those are set in the earlier Spring snow-melt driven flooding, but this time of year all the creeks, kills, and rivers should be receding not rising.

    The situation is so interesting and important that our local public TV political weekly put the weather on top of the show and interviewed meteorologist Paul Douglas about it. Starting just after 3 minutes. Note especially his very important comment at 7:13!!!:

    But don’t worry, we’ll be fine.

    The Amazing Decelerating Acceleration of Velocity Curve Of Global Cooling! #FauxPause

    In 2009 someone wrote a blog post about climate change that made all the usual science denialist claims. Hurricanes have reduced therefore global warming is not real. In this case, hurricanes are one of the main threats of climate change (a straw man) and since they are not as common these days in the Atlantic as alarmists claimed the would be (cherry picking) global warming is not a concern. There were stronger storms in the past. Katrina wasn’t really all that bad. Etc. etc.

    The Ice Caps (he called sea ice “Ice Caps”) are not really melting that bad and besides we don’t really know what they were doing before 1970 so we can use anecdotal evidence that sea ice was less extensive and ignore anecdotal evidence that sea ice was more extensive in the past.

    El Nino was supposed to do somehting rather specific and unusual (that El Nino researchers were never very sure of) and instead did something else rather unusual therefore there is no global warming. Climate models don’t really work, Carbondioxide is a plant food, global temperatures are experiencing a hiatus in increase, it’s really the sun, etc. He called concern over climate change hysteria and called discussion of changes to climate alarmism.

    This was Matt Rogers, who at the time, and who is still now, with the Capitol Weather Group. Perhaps Matt was confused five years ago. Perhaps he was a climate change skeptic in the days when it was reasonable to question the mainstream science, before the consensus formed and climate scientists started working more on details. But no, that doesn’t really explain what he was saying then because consensus was already established. He was, in truth, spouting denialist creed. But still, perhaps these days Matt, who is actually a trained meteorologist, has shaken off the denialism.

    Maybe. But just the other day he came out with a post that is very much worhy of admonishment, in part because of a graphic it uses. Have a look at the graphic, which is about Global Temperature Change in recent years. Tell me what you think this graph shows?

    climategroupgraph

    Decrease, decline, flatness, hiatus. Cooling. Climate getting cooler. Global warming must be wrong.

    Nope.

    This is a change in the rate of acceleration of the velocity of global temperatures. We’ll get back to that in a moment.

    Matt starts his post with:

    The recently-released National Climate Assessment (NCA) from the U.S. government offers considerable cause for concern for climate calamity, but downplays the decelerating trend in global surface temperature in the 2000s, which I document here.

    No it doesn’t. The NCA addresses the topic in the FAQ and in the body of the report rather prominently.

    Matt then notes:

    Many climate scientists are currently working to figure out what is causing the slowdown, because if it continues, it would call into question the legitimacy of many climate model projections (and inversely offer some good news for our planet).

    This is a misstatement. This verbiage implies that many climate scientists accept the idea of a “slowdown” and are trying to figure it out. This is simply not true. There is secular variation in the commonly used surface temperature measures, which are an incomplete estimate of global temperature and warming/cooling over time, ignoring the largest heat reservoir on the planet (the ocean) and highly dynamic changing effects such as the Arctic. It is like an index, useful but nothing like perfect. Imagine using only one of several indexes of the economy to stand in for all of them? You wouldn’t Actually, these temperatures series are much better measures of global warming than any of those economic indexes are of the economy, but you get the point; it is a good estimate. Emphasis on both “good” and “estimate.” Anyway, most of this variation has been explained in the past. A few studies recently explained more of the variation. But overall the march of global surface temperatures have tracked with expectations and gone up over time. Scientists are not scrambling to explain a thing that is not happening. Matt should know this.

    Now about his graph. Matt first tells the people reading his post that they could create their own graph of global temperatures and make one, but no, Mat will do it for you:

    You can see the pause (or deceleration in warming) yourself by simply grabbing the freely available data from NASA and NOAA. For the chart below, I took the annual global temperature difference from average (or anomaly) and calculated the change from the prior year.

    He’s referring to the chart I show above, but implying in the text that this is a chart of global temperature anomalies (differences above or below a baseline) just like any other temperature change over time chart. He doesn’t exactly lie, but he made a very obscure graph of a very obscure measure with questionable statistical validity or usefulness and seems to do everything he can to pass it off to the unwary as a graph showing global temperature decreases over the last several years.

    More subtly, why did he smooth the line? It makes it look like a mathematical function (giving it undue credence?) when it is really multi-cause variation from year to year in a derivative.

    Also, by setting the start of the graph at a recent arbitrary point, the graph can not show the long term trend. That would probably be a more or less flat line with short term up and down trends. It would be a very uninteresting graph. Only by focusing on this close up does it look like it is showing something. At the moment I’m writing this blog post from the middle of the Great North Woods so I don’t have access to the data but maybe I’ll make that graph for you and show you at a later time.

    The “sign of data validation” he refers to in his post, that both data sets have the same trend, is bogus. They are not two separate data sets. They are two overlapping sets of data measuring the same thing. So, here, “Data Validation” means that no one accidentally inserted their checkbook balancing data into the wrong spreadsheet cells.

    Matt notes “…the warm changes have generally been decreasing while cool changes have grown.” This is not a graph of warm or cool changes. It is a graph of the rate at which changes have happened. So by stating it this way, the essence of the graph is lost. This is a graph of change in rate of change.

    Then, “To be sure, both sets of data points show an mean annual change of +0.01C during the 2000s. But, if current trends continue for just a few more years, then the mean change for the 2000s will shift to negative.”

    Wut?

    Nice to admit that the trend is an increasing temperature, but suggesting that this could shift to negative (for more than a brief moment) is insane. This is like looking at the increase in maximum rate of human travel over a century, from horse to car to aircraft to space ship and predicting that at some point we will be going faster than the speed of light. You can’t go faster than the speed of light. You can’t add greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere and cool off the planet short of a very serious negative feedback mechanism which apparently does not exist. Warp drives in the news lately notwithstanding, we will not cool the planet by, effectively, turning up the effects of the sun’s energy.

    Then, “The current +.01C mean increase in temperatures is insufficient to verify the climate change projections for major warming (even the low end +1-2C) by mid-to-late century.”

    There is not a “current +.01C increase.” There is a poorly made graph combined with an apparently poor understanding of the science possibly made with the intent of minimizing concern over global warming covering only a short period of time being misinterpreted as a valid measurement. This is like cold fusion or faster than light neutrinos invalidating the Standard Model in physics. But less interesting.

    The rest of Matt’s post is him tossing softballs at himself in the form of the usual objections people make when someone advocates for the #FausPause. Like that Matt or his friends might be cherry picking. Like they do. Or noting that it is warmer now than ever. Like it is.

    In the end, literally, Matt notes that the slow down is not real, is only temporary, and will go away. But this is only after a majorly misleading graphic and a lot of verbiage with an entirely different message. Is this a new kind of denialism and what do we call it?

    Midori’s Floating World Cafe

    Midori’s Floating World Cafe
    Lizzie, got a job. It’s a pretty nice job, with benefits and a salary and everything. Not in her field (biology), but it is a job she likes. So I took her out for a congratulatory dinner, which ultimately gave me a chance to try a new restaurant. Also, we had been in a routine for a few months of meeting almost every week to work on a project, and those meetings had stopped due to scheduling issues (like, that she went and got a job …). It was time for another dose.

    My plan was to trick Lizzie into determining where we were going to eat. This was going to be difficult. Lizzie is a quiet, unassuming and thoughtful person whose first inclination would be to accommodate my (or anyone else’s) preferences in matters such as this. It would be totally out of character for her to start out by telling me where we should go for dinner. But I wanted her to pick, partly because it was her celebration and partly because of a quirk I have. Sometimes I like to experience the preferences and choices of someone that I care for. I wanted Lizzie to suggest where to eat, and I wanted to try her favorite selections off the menu and probably drink what she was drinking and so on.

    I’m still grinning at the conversation.

    “So, where do you want to go?”

    “Oh, anywhere, I don’t care.”

    (And so on and so on…via email, in person, for three or four days. Then, finally, we’re in the car about to drive off to…somewhere.)

    “So, have you eaten anyplace good lately?”

    “Yeah, I like this new Japanese restaurant off Lake Street.”

    “Oh. So when was the last time you ate there?”

    “Two days ago.”

    “Oh. So you probably don’t want to eat there again right away.”

    “Yeah, I guess so.”

    “Well, there’s Greek.”

    “I could do Greek.”

    “We could just go over to Eat Street and see what happens.”

    “We could.”

    “Maybe Azia or some place.”

    “We could.”

    “You want to eat in your Japanese restaurant, right?”

    “It’s my favorite place. I want to show it to you.”

    “What will we order?”

    “Eel. It’s my favorite.”

    “And what will we–”

    “Sake. Of course.”

    “Okay, lead the way.”

    And thusly, we proceeded to Midori’s Floating World Cafe on 27th Ave in South Minneapolis. At the time we ate there, it was right across the street from the old Resources Center for the America’s building, and next to The Real CMF’s favorite restaurant (to which I had not yet been). Subsequently, Midori’s has moved a couple of hundred feet away.

    We had one of the noodle dishes, a biggish bottle of hot sake, and some sushi.

    As we were ordering, I remembered that neither of us had brought along our List of Endangered Fish: Do Not Eat wallet insert, but we tried to do our best by staying away from sea mammals and anything that was really expensive.

    It turns out that Lizzie and I have pretty much exactly the same taste in sushi: It’s all good, but there must be eel. We figured eel would be safe from an environmental point of view, but we later learned that we had that totally backwards. Eel is one of the worst things you can order from the menu if you care about the planet. Oh, well. We learn.
    (Reposed)

    I liked the fact that we were drinking hot sake. I had not had that since being in Japan a few years ago. In fact, I regaled Lizzie with a story about a fairly intensive foray into the world of hot sake at a bar in Kyoto. Apparently, the custom in Kyoto is for young men to hook up with a particular small neighborhood bar. These bars are all owned and run by women, who develop bonds with these young men and have a sort of motherly relationship with them. So I went to such a bar where two Japanese colleagues, both of whom work in Central Africa, had “grown up.”

    Now, you have to understand that my Japanese is nonexistent, and my colleagues have hardly ever spent time in the English-speaking world, so their English sucked. My host in Japan, a woman who had lived for years in the U.S., was with us, and her English was perfect. But the main point of this gathering was for us Africanists to spend some time together. So, as it developed, Mother Bar Owner and my host (Hitomi) had a nice conversation about who knows what, in Japanese, while my two colleagues and I spend the evening reminiscing in KiSwahili. Much to the amusement of the occasional customer who wandered briefly into this tiny little establishment.

    What was really funny was also too subtle for almost anyone to have noticed: We learned our KiSwahili in very different contexts. So, I was speaking with a Pygmy accent, one of my colleagues was speaking with a Chinese accent, and another was speaking with an Italian accent. That was funny.

    I have three things to say about Midori’s Floating World Cafe. 1) It has a very nice atmosphere, a small establishment with a simple lineup of unpretentious tables and a sushi bar, family run, staffed with excellent servers. 2) The food is quite good. And 3) the prices are very reasonable.

    Lizzie is living in what we used to call a “crash house”…the sort of place I misspent a fair amount of time in my youth. Her stories of life at home reminded me of my own stories, which made good comparisons, so I think we ended up making each other laugh a lot. Maybe we were a little boisterous, because when we got around to leaving, we were the only customers and the proprietor seemed really happy (to see us go?).

    I highly recommend dinner with Lizzie. But since most of you can’t have that, I recommend that you try Midori’s Floating World Cafe in South Minneapolis with someone who makes you smile.

    Midori’s Floating World Cafe is located on 2629 Lake Street, Minneapolis, which is a new location.

    And speaking of sushi, this is the video of the famous Japanese Frilled Shark.

    Minnesota's Current Weather Disaster — Don't worry we'll be fine.

    I woke up this morning to find about a dozen reports on my iPad Damage app indicating trees down and hail damage in many communities from Mankato to Edina, south of the Twin Cities. More of the same. We have been having severe weather for about a month now, or a bit less. One day in late May, Julia and I were taking pictures of people driving too fast through the lake that formed in front of our house form a major downpour. Early in that storm we witnessed a ground strike not too far away. A short while after that an ambulance came screaming by our house, coming from the direction of the ground strike to the hospital just south of us. Later we heard on the news that a woman at a little league game (which, frankly, should have been cancelled) was struck and transported to the hospital … that was certainly her. This morning, Mankato was flooded, a day or two ago a woman was rescued from her car that was eventually swept away by a river that does not normally exist. Flooding up on the Canadian Border has been epic. The entire state is under a Meteorological Siege.

    Not exactly a Turn Round Don't Drown situation, but perhaps a Slow Down So As To Not Crack Your Engine Block situation .
    Not exactly a Turn Round Don’t Drown situation, but perhaps a Slow Down So As To Not Crack Your Engine Block situation .
    Yet, somehow, CNN has not taken notice.

    I believe that what is happening here is an expanded, intensified version of what we usually get around this time of year. The Norther Plains has storms in the late Spring and early Summer for various meteorological reasons. But this Spring, the jet stream continues to experience it’s kinkyness, not the good kind of kinkyness, and we are having stalled weather systems. So, instead of having a storm front move through the area every few days, we have a big huge stormy thing hanging over us for weeks on end.

    This is a similar phenomenon, most likely, to what brought epic floods to Central Europe, the UK, Calgary, and Colorado over the last two years. But, since we have no mountains to speak of and the state is full of more swamp and pond than arroyo and river, we don’t have the same kind of result. The rain that fell over the last 24 hours in southern Minnesota, falling in Colorado’s front range would have wiped out towns and people would be missing for days. Here, we have different results. Same weather phenomenon (more or less) likely caused by the same changes to the environment resulting form global warming (most likely) but spread out a bit in time and space so it becomes, rather than a single big huge national news story, this string of little local news stories (listed by day of month for June):

    The interaction between the nature of events and the nature of news journalism certainly is interesting. We couldn’t stay out of the news when the Polar Vortex was visiting. Now, we are being ignored in all our glorious wetness. That is reasonable … so far this weather has not caused the death and destruction of epic flooding in mountain areas, and we are lucky that we’ve not had significant tornadoes here – the twisters are staying to the south of us, just. But it is interesting that we suffer the weather of countless tiny drops Minnesota style. In silence. With the occasional stern look. We will be making some hot dish now, out of season, but it is our comfort food. Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.

    ADDED:

    Here’s a few tweeted pics from the NWS Twin Cities:

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