Careful! We might learn something!

A university is a collection of departments that agree not to talk to each other. 

I ran into an article claiming that cows radically changed the marine ecosystem in the second half of the 19th century. The title of the piece is "How Cows Destroyed an Entire Marine Ecosystem in California." It's from 2021 so it's not particularly fresh as a topic, but I thought it would be a good example of what can happen. 

This article is a summary of a scientific study called "Nineteenth-century collapse of a benthic marine ecosystem on the open continental shelf." The study is real science with sample taking, sample analysis, radiocarbon dating, and top-level sciencey language. Basically it proves that long ago there were gravel dwelling filter-feeders in clear waters, but by the mid 20th century these were replaced with various mud dwellers living in mud. 

The study area was small, including three Southern California areas. The study says, "These three sites are Short Bank in Santa Monica Bay, and the western and eastern parts of the Palos Verdes shelf."  Having ascertained that this change in the biome occurred, and having quantified the organisms involved, possible causes are sought. Those mentioned are: a.) sewage effluent; b.) global warming; c.) siltation owing to livestock grazing and farming.

The study emphasizes: "Heavy grazing has many negative effects, but most notable in this context is soil compaction from trampling that increases surface runoff of rain and thus the potential for soil erosion. Sediment transport to the sea, always episodic in this semi-arid setting, was thus almost certainly much higher during the nineteenth century than during preceding millennia of occupation by native hunter–gatherers." 

"Thus almost certainly" is what somebody writing a report says when the data is thinnest and most suspect. It's what you say instead of something firm and sciencey. Well, the causes are secondary. The conclusion of the study is that we need to study this topic more. (More funding! More studies! More beach time!)

Here's a free suggestion for the next study. Lay off the global warming and the cows and the peaceful, ecologically-aware indigenous hunter-gathers, and think about these two words: HYDRAULIC MINING.

Before gold was discovered in Coloma, California in 1848, gold was discovered in the San Gabriel Mountains in 1842. Here's an article about it that would be a really good resource except the San Bernardino Sun wants to sit on it like a broody hen rather than let you read it. But here are a whole bunch of pictures that feature hydraulic mining. Yeah, it was horrifically damaging to the environment; the original San Gabriel mines pretty much choked out everybody that relied on Placerita Canyon water. Hydraulic mining was such a big deal and caused so much environmental damage that I'm surprised ecologists don't know about it. But then, the scientists are products of a university, where the History people never talk to the Biology people. 

Let Him Slip Away

Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot has passed away at the age of 84. 

Considering that when I saw him at the Marines Memorial Theater in San Francisco in 1979 his brain was apparently so drug-addled that they passed him a freshly tuned guitar for every number with a lyrics sheet taped to the top of the body, I'd say that he had a good long run. 

Carefree highway

Let me slip away on you

Carefree highway

You've seen better days

The morning after blues

From my head down to my shoes

Carefree highway

Let me slip away, slip away on you... 

Into the arms of our merciful Savior.  

Android Emoticons

Why are there more sad, mad, and bad smilies than glad smilies?

Does this reflect someone's judgement about the default human condition? "Odds are" you feel [this way]? 

Not much room here for those who were born somewhere on the Snark Spectrum. Just for instance:  Where is Playfully Sarcastic? Cheerfully Wry? Weirded-out Sidelong Glance? 

I feel so excluded. 

But Don't worry -- @RealDonaldTrump has a new Non-Fungible Token!

 

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. fell by 1.2 percent in March 2023 to 108.4 (2016=100), following a decline of 0.5 percent in February. The LEI is down 4.5 percent over the six-month period between September 2022 and March 2023—a steeper rate of decline than its 3.5 percent contraction over the previous six months (March–September 2022).

US Leading Indicators

And it’s going to get worse, the Board says. “The Conference Board forecasts that economic weakness will intensify and spread more widely throughout the US economy over the coming months...” 

Okay how can it spread MORE widely?

I forget. Is this business as usual and the recession is coming? Ord is this the recession and the Depression is coming? Does it matter?    

In Which a Work of Literature is Confronted

    We will go through this one number at a time. This is offered without knowing anything about the poet. The original will be in italic type.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

by Wallace Stevens

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,   

The only moving thing   

Was the eye of the blackbird.   

    The blackbird's eye (like most birds) does not actually move in its socket. If the eye is moving, the whole head is moving.  I suspect the twenty snowy mountains are old white-haired literary men, and the poet sees himself as the only one who can see the way to social progress. 

II

I was of three minds,   

Like a tree   

In which there are three blackbirds.   

    blackbird : tree :: mind : Wallace Stevens.
    But blackbirds will fly off. 
    Therefore Wallace Stevens will lose his mind.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   

    I think he must mean raven. Or turkey vulture. Maybe when he writes "blackbird he simply means "black [space] bird."

It was a small part of the pantomime.   

    Pantomime because silent, I would guess. But pantomime is artificial. Is the poet implying that the visible world is not real? 

IV

A man and a woman   

Are one.   

A man and a woman and a blackbird   

Are one.   

    A man and a woman and a blackbird walk into a bar.
    The bartender says, "What'll it be?"
    All three say, "Gimme a shot of Old Crow."

V

I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of inflections   

Or the beauty of innuendoes,   

The blackbird whistling   

Or just after.   

    Blackbirds do not whistle. Perhaps the poet is remembering a Black Phoebe? But that would make it a black-and-white bird. 
At any rate: 
    inflection : innuendo :: blackbird whistle : silence;
    that is, to simplify, 
    voiced : unvoiced ::  voiced : unvoiced;
    or more simply,
    1 = 1.
A tautology is not a very deep statement.

VI

Icicles filled the long window   

With barbaric glass.   

    Barbaric? 
    Also, it was autumn a minute ago, and now it's winter. 

The shadow of the blackbird   

Crossed it, to and fro.   

The mood   

Traced in the shadow   

An indecipherable cause.   

    The antistrophe of this verse is an indecipherable clause.
    

VII

O thin men of Haddam,   

Why do you imagine golden birds?   

Do you not see how the blackbird   

Walks around the feet   

Of the women about you?   

    Residents of Haddam, Connecticut, would perhaps have better appreciated the in-joke here.  I think the poet is asking this: Why think about those who are fighting and dying in the Great War when you should be concerned about their mothers and sweethearts here at home. Perhaps I am crediting the poet with far more philanthropic sentiment than he has demonstrated.

VIII

I know noble accents   

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   

But I know, too,   

That the blackbird is involved   

In what I know.   

    The poet recognizes war rhetoric and patriotic marches, but also acknowledges that with war comes death (and carrion eaters).

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,   

It marked the edge   

Of one of many circles.   

    Two questions:  a.) Does the poet believe in object permanence? Does he believe the blackbird continues to exist when it crosses out of his visible horizon?; b.) Does the poet believe that at the centers of others of the "many circles" there are Others who are potential blackbird observers who may have something to contribute to the conversation? Or are the "many circles" simply the poet's conjecture of other places he himself may someday occupy?

X

At the sight of blackbirds   

Flying in a green light,   

    (A train passing a green lighted track signal at night.)

Even the bawds of euphony   

Would cry out sharply.   

    The power and the unstoppable momentum of the rushing train both inspires and frightens the poet. Embarrassed by these emotions, the poet insists that other poets and literary types would have been scared to be scared too, if they had been so close to that train that night. 

XI

He rode over Connecticut   

In a glass coach.   

    Clutching his gin bottle and high as a kite... 

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook   

The shadow of his equipage   

For blackbirds.   

   ...The poet is scared of his own shadow.
   Or: The poet, buying into pacifist rhetoric, imagines that the Great War is the actual end of civilization.

XII

The river is moving.   

The blackbird must be flying.   

   Ah, now it is Spring! The thaw has opened the waterway, and even the poet's depressive episodes must be temporarily eased. 

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was snowing   

And it was going to snow.   

    Wait! it was Spring a minute ago... 

The blackbird sat   

In the cedar-limbs.

    And -- his depression is back. He's already starting to want that gin bottle again.

Ran into this P. G. Wodehouse Quote

 

“One prefers, of course, on all occasions

to be stainless and above reproach, but,

failing that, the next best thing is, 

unquestionably to have got rid of the 

body.”

― P. G. Wodehouse    

15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975

 

I guess he died longer ago than I thought. Now there was a man who never worried that he was going to run out of commas, Oxford or otherwise. 

Today's computer apocalypse alert level

I asked www.mage.space for a picture of orange blossoms.

As you can see, the blossoms are... orange.

Singularity Alert Level lowered from 3 to 2. 

Thank you.