All posts by Greg Laden

The Robot Who Mistook His Hat For A Wife

Other

I might have two things mixed up here. Anyway, cheap in Kindle form:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat*

In his most extraordinary book, the bestselling author of Awakenings and “poet laureate of medicine” (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients inhabiting the compelling world of neurological disorders, from those who are no longer able to recognize common objects to those who gain extraordinary new skills.

Featuring a new preface, Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with perceptual and intellectual disorders: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; whose limbs seem alien to them; who lack some skills yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. In Dr. Sacks’s splendid and sympathetic telling, his patients are deeply human and his tales are studies of struggles against incredible adversity. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine’s ultimate responsibility: “the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject.”

I Robot*


This classic science fiction masterwork by Isaac Asimov weaves stories about robots, humanity, and the deep questions of existence into a novel of shocking intelligence and heart.

“A must-read for science-fiction buffs and literature enjoyers alike.”—The Guardian

I, Robot, the first and most widely read book in Asimov’s Robot series, forever changed the world’s perception of artificial intelligence. Here are stories of robots gone mad, of mind-reading robots, and robots with a sense of humor. Of robot politicians, and robots who secretly run the world—all told with the dramatic blend of science fact and science fiction that has become Asimov’s trademark.

Climate Change Action For Kids: The Tantrum That Saved The World

Books, Climate Change

The Tantrum That Saved the World* by Megan Herbert and Michael Mann is about a young girl who might be thought of as being on some sort of spectrum, but well at the rational end of the irrationality-rationality spectrum, who gets tired of the “bla bla bla” and forces the climate change issue.

It sounds like a book based on Greta Thunberg, but in fact, the first edition of The Tantrum That Saved the World predated Greta.

The book starts out with the little girl inheriting a huge problem she didn’t ask for, reshaping her very strong emotions into positive and inspiring action. We then encounter information about climate change science presented in a way that is fully accessible to children. Finally, as all worthwhile things do, there is an action plan. My copy came with a nice poster.

Tantrums are bad. Except when they save the world.

I’m working up a podcast, so..

Climate Change

… you get some random info.

If you are driving an electric car in the United States, the price of “fueling” your vehicle has skyrocketed due to petroleum supply change issues related to the fascist invasion of Ukraine exactly 0%.

There are a couple of places where there has been a slight increase, I think owing to some trading back and fort of petrolium supplies, or maybe for no reason at all. But, essentially, electric car owners have been insulated from this problem, insolated as they in fact are.

I heard that the state of Washingon will phase out the sales of new ICE cars by 2030.

You heard about the Conger Ice Shelf falling off Antarctica. It is said to be the size of Manhattan. If you have been following the Antarctica news over the last decade, you will be both alarmed and not as alarmed. First, the good news: An Antarctic ice sheet the size of Manhattan is a baby. The biggest one to ever break lose was something like 76 Manhattans, or approximately one Connecticut. Or, for you Minnesotans, between two and three norther counties. So, not so big. The bad news, though, is really bad. Two parts. First, this region of the Antarctic never sees temperatures above freezing, until very recently. Second, it took a geological instant (literally, days, maybe a couple of weeks) for above freezing temperatures to cause an ice sheet to break free, assuming that the warm air contributed (this remains to be seen).

New video from Climate Denial Crosk of the Week on the future of the US Western Drought is HERE.

Podcast will be with Mike, on Ikonokast, stay tuned.

Kids: Would you save the planet please?

Books, Climate Change

Check out this new book by my friend and colleague, Paul Douglas: A Kid’s Guide to Saving the Planet It’s Not Hopeless and We’re Not Helpless*. Chelen Ecija is the illustrator.

Not hapless either!
This new book, targeted to kids 9-13 years of age (4-6th grade), addresses the climate crisis, and offers doable solutions and activities for kids to help address it.

Part of the book is a mini-course in earth system science, tarted to the specified age group. It is clear and detailed enough to be a good text in 6th grade, when many of these concepts are being covered. The authors outline pre-existing environmental disasters and how they have been fixed, to give hope to the kids, and describes what you can do. The readers are even encouraged to go into climate related fields whey the grow up!

If you are linked to a middle school (like, your kid goes to one) maybe give a copy to the science faculty there!

Highly recommended.

How an epidemic (or pandemic) starts

Health and Medicine, , ,

Years ago Ebola made itself known to scientists, when it appeared simultaneously in the Sudan and Zaire. The two events were a very long way from each other. It happens that I am very familiar with that part of the map, and I’m certain that any attempt to go from Nzara, Sudan, to Yambuku Zaire on land would take several weeks and, actually, be impossible. It could not happen casually. For a while, experts thought a particular person who was probably patient zero at Yambuku had made the trip, despite no evidence for him having done so. In the end, most ebola experts simply stopped thinking about this conundrum. A few of us working in the area, though, had a different idea. Animal-born (we thought fruit bat) ebola spread in the animal first, and conditions emerged that heightened the chance of a jump to humans also spread, so there were two separate jumps. Likely, this could happen now and then, with several jumps within a few weeks time, but only during those few weeks time when conditions were just right. The trick to managing future ebola outbreaks might be to figure out what those conditions might be, and at least, set up a warning system. But, since epidemiology worked at the time entirely on the pump model, one source, one initial spread, that sort of thinking never happened.

If that is typical for zoonotic diseases (even if not inevitable in every case) it presents a slightly different view than what one usually conjures up. It is not the case that an animal sneezes or bleeds (or whatever) on a human, then that humna, patient zero spreads the disease to other humans. Rather, the condition of transfer from an animal reservoir becomes temporarily highly likely insead of almost impossible, and perhaps dozens of transfers happen, of which, one or two or three, perhaps, are traced to eventually by epidemiologists.

Turns out that is what probably happened with Covid-19. The transfer happened twice, over just a few weeks time. The best explanation for this is that some animal species (could be more than one) had their own epidemic of this particular coronavirus strain going on, and there happen to be a big market with this animal species (or species) on sale, and the rest is history.

There are two studies, this one and this one, seem to support this idea. When the disease experts are done being incredibly busy with Covid, maybe they can go back to Sudan/Congo and rethink the initial appearance of Ebola with this model, now no longer just some zany idea a few of us had years ago, in mind.

A short list of banned books

Books, , , , ,

To Kill a Mockingbird*
The Hate U Give*
The Color Purple: A Novel*
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian*
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning*
The Catcher in the Rye*
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley*
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings*
The Lord Of The Rings Illustrated Edition*
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Pantheon Graphic Library)*
Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel (Modern Library 100 Best Novels)*
The Handmaid’s Tale*
Hop on Pop (I Can Read It All By Myself)*
Lord of the Flies*
1984*
The Giver (Giver Quartet, 1)*
Lawn Boy*
The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition*
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone*
The Complete Maus*
Lolita*
The Glass Castle: A Memoir*
Fahrenheit 451*
Out of Darkness*
Critical Race Theory (Third Edition): An Introduction (Critical America, 20)*
And Tango Makes Three: Book and CD*
Assata An Autobiography*
The Kite Runner*
The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy*
The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War*
A Civic Biology: The Original 1914 Edition at the Heart of the “Scope’s Monkey Trial”*
The Bluest Eye*
Jack of Hearts (and other parts)*
All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto*
Impending Crisis of the South “Annotated”*
Animal Farm*

Excellent Critical Race Theory Novel: Tangerine

Books, , , ,

It exposes white privilege. It indicts white supremacy. It problemetizes the cult of football. What’s not to love?

Tangerine* by Edward Bloor is written from the perspective of a sort of disabled (but not really? that’s part of the plot) middle school who is white, frail, very smart, repressed, and an excellent soccer player. He is forced to leave his white suburban school and either attend a nearby Catholic school, or alternatively, go to the “inner-city” tough kid not very white school. He readily picks the latter, for some very good reasons, and there he meets his first real fears, his first real friends, and sets about making and breaking heroes.

There are also tangerines, the fruit, which play a special role in the narrative.

This is a book that should totally be banned and burned if you don’t want kids to examine their own privilege, think about fairness and class, or confront racism. Or be mean to football. It is one of those books often assigned in middle school, and this is the time we are reading all the middle school books. Fits the bill as quick and entertaining, meaningful adult reading.

On this terrible anniversary …

Books

… how about a little light reading?

We just finished this as part of our family reading (which is these days middle-grade fiction):  We Dream of Space*

Newbery Medalist and New York Times–bestselling author Erin Entrada Kelly transports readers to 1986 and introduces them to the unforgettable Cash, Fitch, and Bird Nelson Thomas in this pitch-perfect middle grade novel about family, friendship, science, and exploration. This acclaimed Newbery Honor Book is a great choice for readers of Kate DiCamillo, Rita Williams-Garcia, and Rebecca Stead.

Cash, Fitch, and Bird Nelson Thomas are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware. In 1986, as the country waits expectantly for the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, they each struggle with their own personal anxieties. Cash, who loves basketball but has a newly broken wrist, is in danger of failing seventh grade for the second time. Fitch spends every afternoon playing Major Havoc at the arcade on Main and wrestles with an explosive temper that he doesn’t understand. And Bird, his twelve-year-old twin, dreams of being NASA’s first female shuttle commander, but feels like she’s disappearing.

The Nelson Thomas children exist in their own orbits, circling a tense and unpredictable household, with little in common except an enthusiastic science teacher named Ms. Salonga. As the launch of the Challenger approaches, Ms. Salonga gives her students a project—they are separated into spacecraft crews and must create and complete a mission. When the fated day finally arrives, it changes all of their lives and brings them together in unexpected ways.

Told in three alternating points of view, We Dream of Space is an unforgettable and thematically rich novel for middle grade readers.

We enjoyed it.

Martin Luther King Was Good At Talkin’

Language, Politics, ,

As part of my contribution to celebrating MLK day, in this time of transition in race awareness in the United States, I haves an informal rhetorical analysis of King’s “I have a dream” speech. Professional Rhetoricians have analyzed this speech at a much more sophisticated level than I could ever do. This is just from a person who writes the occasional speech pointing out some of the rhetorical devices, or really, pointing out that they are there and helping you find them on your own (with LOTS of hints).

Especially notable is repetition, but not just by repeating things. The repetitions are a framework for space and place references, which are often metaphors, or for other references, and the repetitions evolve through the speech, and are used to circle back on some of the same themes so they are produced very effectively three or four times.  This is speech is a locomotive, and the repetitions are the track it is barreling down.

You can read the speech here. 

Look for the meter.:

I am happy to join
with you today
in what will go down
as the greatest demonstration
in the history of our nation

There are many,many other segments of this speech that come in a five-five-five or similar poetic meter.

Look for reference to classics/bible:

  • Five score years ago, a great American… we’ve come to this hallowed spot. (from Pereclies Funerary Oration and the Gettysburg Address).
  • wallow in the valley of despair
  • Lots of others

Look for nearly hyperbolic adjectives with repetition:

Fatal to overlook the urgency. Fierce urgency. Urgency of now.

Look for rich metaphors being asked to do a lot of work:

  • We’ve come to cash a check, a promissory note written byh the founders, America has defaulted on this note.
  • Invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
  • Threshold of palace of justice
  • Cup of bitterness and hatred
  • Winds of police brutality

Look for building metaphors on metaphors:

America has defaulted on the check but the bank of justice is not bankrupt.

Look for poetic repetition:

  • One hundred years later…
  • We cannot be satisfied
  • I have a dream dream dream
  • Let freedom ring

Look for metaphor mixed with repetition and indirect reference, esp. using space/place:

Cannot walk alone
As we walk… we shall always march
We cannot turn back.

Further look at the “I have a dream” part

  • “I have a dream that” = five beat rhythm
  • “I have a dream that” repeated four times, then shifted: “I have a dream TODAY!” Twice
  • Many of the “I have a dream” clauses re-visit earlier parts of the speech, stating the same idea again but in this elevated prose.

Look for use of place and space, including spatial shifts in phrases, and where the adjectives sit in the language:

In Dream section, place (and person) repeated: This nation, just Georgia, just Mississippi, Alabama, Every valley, every hill and mountain, etc.

Mountain of despair, Every valley and every hill and mountain, rough spaces made plain, crooked places made straight, etc. etc.

“Let freedom ring” repetition, repeating themes for THIRD time, making use of space and place AGAIN. by this time the listener is totally in the groove with respect to the framework of metaphors, the cadence of repetition, and the space/place framework.

Again, five beat repetition in “Let freedom ring from”

Rich juicy adjectives for each of the places mentioned (mighty, prodigious, curvaceous) replaced for a few beats with a built in strong adjective as part of the place name (Stone Mountain, Lookout Mountain) etc.

Reverse of ring repeat in first “last line. “

These last two things (have a name in rhetoric, I forgot it if I ever really knew it) bump the listener.

Denouement

Full of repeats, classic references, more place/space references, the whole shebang in one little paragraph followed by:

Powerful repeats (“free at last”) with a couplet of iambic pentameter to finish it off:

Thank god Almighty
We are free at last

We Commemorated January 6th

2022 Election, MAGA terrorism, Politics

And by “we” I mean “they” not “I” because of Covid related issues and childcare. But we all were there in spirit.

All around the country, people from a wide swath of the political spectrum, but mostly Centrists, Liberals, Progressives and such, gathered in various places but usually near the seats of government, and in various manners memorialized the attempted coup staged by failed twice impeached Republican President Trump and his white supremacist terrorist allies on the street and in the halls of Congress. This coup is still in progress. The roots of the coup go back father in time. We are still fighting it. But January 6th is the convenient date for the opening salvo, the Fort Sumter of the current culture war turned Civil Rift.

The people who went to these event did not break into their government buildings. They did not threaten to murder elected officials. They did not destroy property. They did not beat up police officers. They did not kill or injure anybody. To the right wing, that makes them chumps, but to us, who make up the core of our democracy, that makes them True Americans.

Meanwhile, the Right Wing mostly sat around simpering. The leaders and organizers called for celebration, but no one moved a muscle, no one showed up. Perhaps they are embarrassed. Perhaps the illegality of it all dawned on them, and they didn’t want to make their situations worse. Perhaps their more sensible spouses, friends, parents, kids, told them to take it down a notch and go back out to their porn-decorated garages and pretend to work on their motorcycles. Probably all of those reasons pertain.

We commemorated January 6th with a time honored democratic process. We stood on soap boxes, yelled and sang. (Again, by “we” I mean the great and brave “they” and I thank them.) Later we will work for campaigns and vote. It is undemocratic to physically attack and try to kill those with whom we disagree. That is literally the definition of terrorism. Democracy and terrorism do not mix.

Please consider writing a letter to your local paper that says something nice about democracy, some time over the next few weeks.