"Tony Steinberg: Brave Seventh-Grade Viking Warrior," by TAYLOR MALI

Long time readers of this blog may know that I'm a big fan of Taylor Mali. I can watch his "What Teachers Make" video any time my willpower to become a teacher flags, and it perks me right back up.

Prepare for a few sniffles on this one, it's excellent.



Enjoy people who can truly put it down,

Bp

[via my soft-hearted Canukistani Operative "Yuri"]

Paul Krugman quote, on Climate Change

"Responding to climate change with the vigor that the threat deserves would not, contrary to legend, be devastating for the economy as a whole. But it would shuffle the economic deck, hurting some powerful vested interests even as it created new economic opportunities. And the industries of the past have armies of lobbyists in place right now; the industries of the future don’t."

— Paul Krugman

Thom Hartmann - The Crisis of Western Culture

A good interview of Thom Hartmann regarding his new book Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture.



Enjoy hearing the good news,

Bp

[via Canukistani Kate]
.

Mark Twain Quotes

Ran across these at Refspace, and picked out a few choice numbers that caught my attention. Click the linked text to see the whole collection. There are 3 pages, and its worth the scroll. Folks who know me will recognize some of these as I use them often -- see further, the Wagner comment:

History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.

In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination.

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man; brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

Enjoy wisdom from the past,

Bp

[image via Wiki Commons]

A shot from the Blogosphere -- Dooce and Adorability

There was a period, somewhat brief and before I had blogged much, when I thought Dooce was a lucky stiff. She was a lady who wrote a few witty posts at a time when folks were just getting turned on to blogging and then she was a celebrity. Poof. Like that. She captured the mommy audience -- bored moms at home with infants and an internet connection, just looking for people to make enormously powerful, like Oprah.

But, as I've mentioned before on this blog, this is no accident. She's talented, funny as hell, AND well positioned as a writer.

Today's post, called The House of Adorable, is a great example of her writing. She can take the most mundane events and make them the jumping off point for a scads of interesting tangents and side shows. As well as simply having a great sense of comedic timing.

And the subject matter today is the kind of thing that fills my life lately. So it's extra poignant.

My hat is off to you Mrs. Armstrong, you go.

Bp

German Biological Illustrations from 1904 --- Gorgeous Stuff

The book is Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformed der Natur (Artforms of Nature). The prints are fantastic, classy, beautiful, etc. Check out the wiki commons page here for more. [I must admit, it also makes one wonder just how many tattoos out there in the world are based on this work, I'm just sayin']









Enjoy awesome art inspired by science,

Bp

[via the always-classy Dani of Dani Boynton Photography, Canukistan]

Squashed Philosophers

Here's a great site for informationovores -- Squashed Philosophers. There's a pretty comprehensive list of (primarily Western) philosophers, with a one-line quote/paraphrase from each.

The real work, and interest, on the website is on the right side of the page. There are links to at least one major work by each philosopher in condensed form.

I would say that Cliffs notes of anything should always be approached with caution, used as an introduction or exploratory gesture, but you can always read the full work if it catches your attention.

Enjoy expanding your vocabulary and possibly horizons,

Bp

[via my Canukistani, Ex-Pat Uncle Ted]

Michael Pollan live at the Schnitz

The Wife and I saw Michael Pollan speak at The Schnitz last night, and really enjoyed it.

As I was trying to describe the talk to T. when we got home, it was almost Pollan's attitude more than the information that I appreciated the most. He's of course very well read about his subject matter (for those of you who haven't heard of him, the subject matter is food, and all the myriad implications around our decisions about food), but he doesn't present at all as someone defeated by the enormity of some of the problems he's exposing. He very much conveyed the sense that any of the problems lined out during the talk were not too large to deal with, they were conceptually graspable, and very much available for positive change.

His positivism wasn't pie-in-the-sky, either. He was realistic in his assessment about, for instance, the strength of the agri business lobby in Washington and its effect on the policy decisions of the Obama administration. But then turned around and gave examples of public movements and outcry creating the political will to get large tasks done.

Here is a video in which Pollan covers some of the same subject matter as he did last night at the Authors@Google series of lectures. Maybe you have the time to sit down with him for a bit, I think it's worth it.



Enjoy learning and being inspired about the important things,

Bp

Word of the day: Balanoculture

I received an email a few months back from an uncle who was trying out making some Acorn meal. I thought, "man, these guys are as weird as I am."

Reading Oak: The Frame of Civilization by William Bryant Logan prompted Tom's experiment. Although I haven't read the oak book yet, Logan wrote another book that I found quite a great read, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth.

As for the word of the day, here is the body of my uncle's email, quoting the book:

I just finished re-reading an excellent book - Oak: the frame of civilization. Here's a review of the section that got me going.

Chapter Three, "Balanoculture," (defined as societies whose diet staple is the oak acorn) discusses evidence the oak tree's earliest contribution to civilization was to feed people. Recent research suggests not all early humans were big game hunters who eventually converted to farming. Some of our human ancestors were balanophagists. As an example, the archaeological site at Catal Huyuk, a settlement 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent (modern-day Turkey), offers clues its residents ground and ate acorns as their diet staple. Once its tannin is leached out, the acorn is highly nutritious and surprisingly filling. (Logan personally sought out Korean acorn jelly and thought it even an appetite suppressant--Slim*Fast(TM) buyers might soon be trekking to their neighborhood Korean food stores.) The crucial fact for theories about what our ancient ancestors ate is acorns are much easier to harvest and store, for calories spent, than chasing animals.

Interestingly, California is home to some of the finest remnants of balanoculture. As an example, if one travels two and a half hours northeast of, say, the Bay Area, one crosses Highway 49 to reach the town of Volcano, where the Indian Grinding Rock State Historical Park preserves a legacy of those early Californians, the Miwoks: some 1,185 mortar holes, the largest collection of bedrock mortars anywhere in North America. Miwoks used pestles in these mortars to grind acorns and did so for five thousand years until early in the twentieth century.

As an aside, here are the quotes that make up the signature text of all of Uncle Tom's emails. I'm so pleased to come from a sane family.

"Nature is the art of God" - Dante

"No amount of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted" - Aesop

"Technology is of no use to us if it is used without respect for the earth and its processes" - Aldo Leopold

Enjoy the wisdom of relatives,

Bp

The Visiting Writers Series at Reed College

These are free events, where you get to listen to authors in a small auditorium, then hang out afterwards and chat with them. I've had the chance to meet some of my favorite authors through this (Chris Offutt), and actually share coffee and shoot the shit. It's a great service that the college provides, and many folks don't know about it.

Here is a copy of the latest email announcement, with contact information if you want to sign up for the email list yourself.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

VISITING WRITERS AT REED COLLEGE - 2008-09

Thursday, October 2nd. Psychology Building Auditorium, Room 105, 6:30 p.m.
ELISSA SCHAPPELL • PAULS TOUTONGHI
Elissa Schappell is the author of Use Me, a collection of ten related stories that explore the relationships between friends and family, betrayal and loyalty. A contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Schappell is a co-founder of the literary magazine, Tin House. She is a coeditor of the anthology The Friend Who Got Away. She received her MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University, has been a senior editor at The Paris Review, and has contributed to numerous magazines including GQ, Vogue, Bomb, Bookforum, and Spin.
Pauls Toutonghi was born in 1976 in Seattle, Washington. His fiction has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, One Story Magazine, The Boston Review, Glimmer Train, Book Magazine, Terminus, and other small
periodicals. He received a Pushcart Prize for his short story,
Regeneration, which appeared in The Boston Review in 2000. His first
novel, Red Weather, was published by Random House in 2006. It has been
translated into Latvian and German. His other writing has appeared in
Sports Illustrated, The Crab Creek Review, and The Yemen Observer. He is
a mongrel — half-Latvian and half-Egyptian. His earliest memories are
steeped in linguistic confusion. He received his MFA in poetry and his
Ph.D. in English literature from Cornell University. He now teaches at
Lewis & Clark College.

Thursday, October 30th. Psychology Building Auditorium, Room 105, 6:30 p.m.
MARIE HOWE
Marie Howe is the author of three volumes of poetry, The Good Thief, What the Living Do, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, and is the coeditor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic. She is the recipient of a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets, an NEA, a Guggenheim, and has been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni,
Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others.
Currently, Howe teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College,
Columbia, and New York University.

Thursday, November 6th. Psychology Building Auditorium, Room 105, 6:30 p.m.
STEPHEN ELLIOTT • ALICE FULTON
Stephen Elliott is the author of six books including the story
collection My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up and the novel
Happy Birthday Baby, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young
Lion Award, as well as named a Best Book of 2004 in Salon.com, Newsday,
Chicago New City, the Journal News, and the Village Voice. In addition
to writing fiction he frequently writes on politics. In 2004 he wrote a
book about the quest for the Democratic presidential nomination titled
Looking Forward To It. Elliott's writing has been featured in Esquire,
The New York Times, GQ, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 &
2007, The Best American Erotica, and Best Sex Writing 2006. He is also
the editor of three collections of politically inspired fiction and the
founder of the Progressive Reading Series, which helps authors raise
money for and participate on behalf of progressive candidates and causes.
Alice Fulton’s first fiction collection, The Nightingales of Troy: Connected Stories, was published by W.W. Norton in July 2008. Her most recent book of poems is Cascade Experiment. Her poetry collection, Felt, was awarded the 2002 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress and was named by the L.A. Times as one of the Best Books of 2001. Her other books include Sensual Math; Powers of Congress; Palladium, winner of the 1985 National Poetry Series and the 1987 Society of Midland Authors Award; and Dance Script with Electric Ballerina, winner of the 1982 Associated Writing Programs Award. She has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Michigan Society of Fellows, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among many
others. She is the Ann S. Bowers Professor of English at Cornell University.

Thursday, November 20th. Psychology Building Auditorium, Room 105, 6:30
p.m.
C.S. GISCOMBE
C. S. Giscombe was born in Dayton, Ohio. His poetry books are
Postcards, Here, and Giscombe Road. His book of linked essays is Into
and Out of Dislocation. Reed students have written senior theses on his
books Here and Giscombe Road. His most recent book of poems, Prairie
Style, was just released. He is working on a prose book about trains and
train metaphors, Railroad Sense. His work appears in the anthologies
Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry, Lyric Postmodernisms, and
American Hybrid, among others. Gisombe has won a Carl Sandburg Award,
and has received grants from the NEA, the Illinois Arts Council, the
Fund for Poetry, and the Council for the International Exchange for
Scholars. Giscombe currently teaches at Berkeley and is a long distance
cyclist.

Thursday, March 12th. Psychology Building Auditorium, Room 105, 6:30 p.m.
SUSAN STRAIGHT
Susan Straight's novels include I Have Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots, Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights, The Gettin Place, and Highwire Moon, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her essays have appeared in Harper's, Salon.com, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The New York Times, and on NPR's All Things Considered, as well as in women's magazines such as Real Simple and Family Circle. Her short stories have appeared in McSweeney's and Zoetrope, among other publications. Her honors and awards include the California Book Prize, a Lannan Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a Best American Short Story Award. Straight was born in Riverside and lives there with her three daughters.

Thursday, March 26th. Psychology Building Auditorium, Room 105, 6:30 p.m.
KATHERINE DUNN
Katherine Dunn is interested in extremes. One Ring Circus, a collection of her essays on the sport of boxing, will appear early in 2009. With photographer Jim Lommasson on the book Shadow Boxers, Dunn won the 2004 Lange-Taylor Documentary Prize. Her third novel, Geek Love, was a finalist for the 1989 National Book Award. Dunn was a member of the Reed class of 1968, but dropped out before graduating to travel and live in Central America and Europe. She has lived and worked for many years in Portland, Oregon.

Thursday, April 9th. Psychology Building Auditorium, Room 105, 6:30 p.m.
MATTHEW DICKMAN
Matthew Dickman’s first collection of poems, All American Poem, won the 2008 American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize in Poetry, selected by Tony Hoagland. His chapbook, Amigos, was published in 2007 by Q Ave Press. Dickman’s poems appear in Tin House, Clackamas Literary Review, Agni Online, and The New Yorker, among others. A native of Portland, Oregon, he is the recipient of fellowships from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.


Contact kmb@reed.edu to be removed from the Visiting Writers at Reed
email list. Check out our webpage at http://web.reed.edu/visiting_writers



--
Karen M. Bondaruk
Faculty Assistant
Reed College
Vollum 320
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd.
Portland, OR 97202
503.777.7753 (voice)
503.777.7769 (fax - attn: KBondaruk)
kmb@reed.edu

Quantum Bees!?

In his book The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton asserts that Biology is the only field of science that really hasn't integrated quantum theory -- it still lives mainly in a Newtonian universe. Other scientific fields, not the least of which being physics, have embraced the Quantum Mechanics possibilities and used them to great effect -- see further cell phones, microprocessors, etc. When biologists begin to speak in terms of the realities of the quantum world, they tend to be laughed off the stage.

How does this relate to bees? It looks like Barbara Shipman, a mathematics professor at the University of Rochester, is beginning to use quantum theory to guide her thinking about bees and especially bee navigation and communication.

It is, specifically, the Bee Dance that is the focus of her work. Here is a quick video showing the dance and talking a little about what is currently known. Here is another video talking about how the dance "incorporates" vector calculus to stay accurate as the day continues and the sun moves. These two videos make the behavior seem specific and complex, but the mechanisms they propose don't hold a candle to the subtlety and complexity of Shipman's theories.

Shipman wants to try and figure out how bees gather, process, and communicate the navigational information they transmit during the dance. Her search took her quickly into advanced mathematics and quantum field theory. The article does an admirable job bringing such esoteric scientific topics to a readable level, and is well worth the effort.

Enjoy the intrigue of the world around you,

Bp

[via Babs, excellent catch!]

Events in Portland: conundrum and suggestions

I often feel completely overwhelmed by how much stuff happens in Ptown that I'd like to attend, and miss. In the last few years, to be honest, I've just plugged my ears and yelled "lalalalallalala" to it all. I don't check The Mercury for music events, or the Readings at Powells Books even.

I do subscribe to an email list from Reed College about visiting writers, because I've scored big there and it's passive. I actually got to share coffee and chit chat one of my favorite authors, Chris Offutt. He read out of an as-of-yet unpublished manuscript, we knocked around some ideas with him, it was freaking great. And free, which just puts it over the top.

Where was I?

Oh, so I got a calendar from the Portland REI that I wanted to point a few things out from. The Map and Compass Navigation class looks just dandy. One of those skills you want someone to know for you, and thus should learn for your own dam self (speaking of my own dam self here). Snow Survival with Trackers NW looks like another goldmine. And just for fun, the Marshall Park Ivy Pull. Who can pass up a chance to be a destructive vandal, but for The Light? Rip apart plants and climb trees and trash stuff in a public park, but to rid it of an invasive species -- perfect.

Gods, this turned into a big post when I wasn't looking. Time for morning tea.

Enjoy your local educational and recreational opportunities,

Bp

Stop the MF'n presses: Peter Jackson has signed on to produce The Hobbit

Geeks and nerds, dorks and dweebs everywhere -- let us drop our heads, and take a moment of silence in thanks... Peter MF'n Jackson is going to make the MF'n HOBBIT!

Thank God.

You know, it just had to be done. The universe was set atilt by the LOTR movies, and it needed The Hobbit to set it right again.

And now we have it.

The Wife's gonna freak out.

Enjoy your earth-shattering revelations,

Bp

Edit/Addendum: A few more links about the subject: E news online, the grandest of fansites theonering.com, the NYT talks about fan pressure before the deal was done. Ok I'll stop now.

Quote from my current reading: Annie Dillard

Here is a paragraph out of the book I'm reading, Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk. She has just spotted a weasel for the first time, and is describing it.

Weasel! I had never seen one wild before. he was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I did not see, any more than you see a window.

There are more outrageous or esoteric quotes to pick, but that one caught me by the directness of her language, her varied use of sentence structure, and the unusual analogies she makes.

Enjoy your literary heroes,

Bp

6-word short stories

Awesome idea by Wired magazine, 6 word sci fi stories -- they invited famous and semi famous authors to contribute. Check it out, they're really worth the read.

My favorite so far:

Easy. Just touch the match to
- Ursula K. Le Guin


Thanks Bentley.

Enjoy some light reading,

Bp

I caved, finally reading the Harry Potter series

I didn't read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Urdu, but it sure looks cool don't it? Seeing the latest movie in the serial, I got inspired to give the books another try. The first time I tried it was just too *kiddish* for me, I couldn't get through the first book. This time I read the first one in a couple days, enjoyed it, and am on my way. They're quite imaginative and I suspect I will make it through this run. I hear the earlier ones are the hardest for adults to get through as the author was still getting on her feet and the characters are the youngest.

The Wife has accused me of "never reading fiction" many times, though I did read His Dark Materialstrilogy at her urging -- not fictional enough I guess. I really enjoyed those books, too. And Where the Rivers Change Direction as well, even while I was in school -- it's not only fiction but a book for ADULTS even, so there.

So now I'm a Potterhead, and I can join groups of dithering fans as the new book comes out. The Wife isn't as mad a fan now as she was during the first half of the series (all our books are hardbound first editions bought on or near the day of release), but we can gossip now about the characters and I won't be left in the dark.

Enjoy your summer reading,

Bp

Tom Waits, bad influence

So last night, as per usual this close to finals, the crew was up late and studying at Doctor Octagon's. Through some byway of conversation, I found out that Lil Mike had no idea who Tom Waits was -- kids these days! I took it upon myself to introduce the boy. So I pulled up some favorite songs, in video form, starting with Chocolate Jesus, and then hitting him with a one-two punch of Shore Leave and 9th and Hennepin.

The effect was marked -- and made me remember back to when I first heard Tom Waits, a couple centuries ago. His eyes got big, his attention galvanized. "Oh god I love gravelly voices like that." Then silence for a while, video switched to 9th and Hennepin -- "holy crap I so need to get this, I can't believe I've never heard this, this rocks! He's great, I love this!" I almost felt like I was sullying the poor boy. I mean, Tom Waits can lead to good things, like buying all the Tom Waits one can get their hands on, or maybe reading Bukowski or Miller. Or it could lead to bad things, like picking up a vicious drinking habit, smoking way too many cigarettes, mixing with low women in terminal bars, and taking up poker. You just never know, it could go either way.

I had some weird rush of recognition, or nostalgia watching Lil Mike's eyes glow as he was lit by the presence that is The Tom. You could just feel it, he was hooked -- this was going to be a thing for him. It was a singular moment, to actually be right there when it happened -- to see it happen. Time will tell how this encounter affects Lil Mike in the long term -- I pray well. If he ends up in the gutter, drinking at 10:00 a.m. on a weekday, grinding out stories about girls that did him wrong, wearing ties and hats... it's my fault. It will be on me, because I was the one that first tipped him off.