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Archive for April 7th, 2011
This Blog Life
Can I just share with you the exciting life of a journalist blogger? It’s way cool.
But you already know that, because we tell you when we’re heading off to conferences in Doha, or returning from other ones held in southern California resort hotels. You also know about all the book tour stops and speaking engagements, right? You get the picture. We’re important.
As for me, let’s see, where to start. Well, the morning is always the best time, when I make school lunches, serve Ms. Scape her coffee, and cajole my two little boys out the door. If it’s above 40 degrees and not raining, they like to (literally) jump on their scooters and give me my first adrenaline rush of the day, as I pant after them, yelling manically, “slow down!” at least 10 times during the five minutes it takes us to get to school, which is only a few blocks from our apartment. That never gets old.
On the way back, I sometimes stop off at the corner Starbucks, where one barista will have my “tall” coffee ready for me before I get to the head of the line. Kinda like that show where everybody knows your name. But I do miss the other barista who used to flirt with me. That always made me feel younger than I am, especially when I would show up sweaty and panting, scooters dangling in my arms. But she’s been gone a while; I think Ms. Scape had her secretly transferred to another Starbucks.
What comes after the coffee varies, depending on what far flung place I’m heading off to. Some days it’s to NYU, where I try to alternately entertain and educate a roomful of 20-somethings about journalism basics. Other days, I might grab lunch with an editor friend in Manhattan. One thing I don’t do is spend much time on Facebook or Twitter, because I’m deathly afraid of getting sucked into a vortex of endless updates and tweets and retweets that seem vital at that second, when instead I could be catching up on last week’s New Yorker.
I really don’t know where the day goes, until it’s time for me to pick up the boys from school. Then it’s homework and off to the playground where I relive the Darwinian, Lord of the Flies moments of my youth.
But nothing beats playing with my boys. Today, I pretended to be a basketball hoop (hunched over with arms extended in a circle). They took turns shooting a blue dodgeball through my arms and really seemed to enjoy thumping me on the head or watching the ball roll around the imaginary rim.
After that, we each scarfed down a packet of Phineas and Ferb gummy bears (Ms. scape wasn’t home yet). On warmer days, we’ll get Italian ices.
This is followed by dinner and board games (we’re on a Zingo kick), and sometimes a TV show (Phineas and Ferb or Good Luck, Charlie) or wild hilarious gyrations to their new favorite group, the Beatles. Then, it’s book reading time (Captain Underpants or Phineas and Ferb) and a torturously long good night ritual.
If I’m still sentient after this, I’ll grade papers, think of some big thoughts for the next day’s blog entry, or catch up on news. Mostly, I fall right out and dream about the really cool places all the other science bloggers are heading off to.
On Borrowed Time
Over at Frontier Earth, some musing about beaches, climate change, and homeowners beating back an advancing sea.
Luck of the Irish
Some good news for Guinness (and black & tan) fans who want to drink away their climate woes in a European “lifeboat.”
Methane Abundance
No, it’s not the title of a new Howard Stern skit.
It’s what Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel calls the world we live in today, over at Dot Earth, where Andrew Revkin is asking if this new shale gas report from EIA
completely ices the case that gas is now (more than was already clear) a fundamental game changer.
The Fever is Spiking
For two years the American political landscape has been rocked by a movement that has turned the GOP into a Frankenstein and set back rational debate on climate change. I submit that the Tea Party’s power to shape politics and climate policy has now crested. Consider two seemingly unrelated events that happened yesterday.
One of them, a source of unnecessary anguish for some (but really a clever chess move move by Democrats), was written up in The Hill:
The House rejected a Democratic amendment Wednesday that would have put the chamber on record backing the widely held scientific view that global warming is occurring and humans are a major cause.
Others are also inclined to interpret this event as a dark day for humanity. But I see it as the moment the Tea party tinged opposition to climate science spiked.
That’s because it came on the same day that Glenn Beck announced his departure from Fox News. This observation in the Guardian captures why I think the phenomena of the Tea Party as a political force will be short-lived (my emphasis):
The show’s peak of popularity coincided with the rise of the Tea Party, and his trademark blend of paranoia and conspiracy attracting a wide following ““ and an equally wide circle of criticism, thanks to often bizarre statements.
Will the Tea Party’s influence on the climate debate be a passing phenomenon, like Glenn Beck? I think we’ll know the answer to that on November 6, 2012.
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