Science and Politics

Just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change moves closer to consensus on global warming, the US Govt finally, sort of, acknowledges that, sure, climate change could be happening.

An article in today's Times discusses the Panel's findings and soon-to-come report, which will lay out the science behind climate change and define what this change will cause. While there is some disagreement on the panel, it centers on differences in projections of just how much the sea level will rise during the 21st century. Not if, but how much.

Points to be made in the report include:

--The Arctic Ocean could largely be devoid of sea ice during summer later in the century.

--Europe’s Mediterranean shores could become barely habitable in summers, while the Alps could shift from snowy winter destinations to summer havens from the heat.

--Growing seasons in temperate regions will expand, while droughts are likely to ravage further the semiarid regions of Africa and southern Asia.

The squabbling among the scientists, mild though it is, is focused on revising projections of sea level rises due to newer, lower estimates having left out "recent observations of instability in some ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland."

Meanwhile in the good ol US of A, we're still not totally sure that this is even happening. Our political ostriches, motivated by greed not by fear, still worry that we're being fooled by overzealous greenies bent on letting China and India surpass us as the strongest global economic players.

Since the GOP has lost control of Congress, though, change will come. Barbara Boxer is the new head of the Environment and Public Works Committee, ousting James Inhofe, moron and Republican of Oklahoma, who claimed that climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. According to Inhofe, even still, "There is no convincing scientific evidence" that human activity is causing global warming... We all know the Weather Channel would like to have people afraid all the time."

I don't even think this merits comment.

But, at least the time has come for this to be up for public debate. We're not afraid of talking about it anymore which, shockingly and sadly, is a big step forward.

One of the worst things about this governmental idiocy, as I see it, is that we're missing the biggest economic opportunity to come along in recent memory. Green energy will happen. It has to. And instead of jumping out ahead of the world and developing technologies that everyone will want and need, we go after the ANWR, we buy bigger vehicles, we keep dumping money into the pockets of those we fight in the war on terror. We continue to do what we've always done.

Change will come. But is 2008 too late?

Morr Music

For all you e-music users, lovers and haters out there, some exciting news.

Morr Music, the mostly electronic and somewhat experimental label based in Berlin has arrived at some deal with e-music, and now, after a notable and annoying absence, their stuff is available for download.




This label has had a lot to do with my long-overdue acceptance of electronic music as a legitimate art form. For a long time, I was kind of an idiot. I insisted that if it's music, play it on instruments. Bleeps and bloops were exactly that: entertaining noises, but not real music.




Real music. Sheezus. Real music is whatever the creator decides it is, and whatever the listener connects with or enjoys or internalizes or is entertained by. Who the hell am I to say what real music is?




These days, I'd much rather cue up the latest record by Boards of Canada than I would the Reverend Horton Heat. Somehow, it speaks to me more.


Lali Puna, Masha Qrella, Mum, Electric President, B. Fleischmann, Ms. John Soda, Tarwater, and a whole bunch more are now cataloged on e-music and ready for your downloading pleasure. Take a listen. There's some amazing music happening at Morr.

Who's It Gonna Be?

Hillary is in.
So says this morning's Times.

In the wake of recent exploratory committee formations and outright declarations, throwing this one on the pile gives Democrats, in my opinion, a pretty damned decent set of options.

Biden, Edwards, Vilsack, Dodd, maybe Richardson, Clinton, and Obama. The depth of talent and appeal on this list could be significant. My hope is that it's so significant, and the range of views so broad, that in the aftermath of the Republican implosion, voters who traditionally sit on the other side of the aisle will pay as close attention to what these folks have to say (yes, including Clinton) as they do to their own party's meager offerings, so far made up of McCain and Giulliani, far as I know.

It looks like the race is begun. Hoo-boy.

New on the Range

The New Year is here, and the new music is flowing.

Headlines go to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who are putting out their anxiously awaited new CD this month, Some Loud Thunder. It comes out on the 29th, I think, but I've got it. Ha ha!

Actually, you can have it, too. If you pre-order it through Insound, you get it shipped to you upon release, and in the meantime, you can download the whole thing from them. That's right--$13, you download it now, and when it comes out, they send you the actual CD. Pretty great deal.

Go ahead: http://www.insound.com/cyhsy/

I've got some comments, of course, some early opinionizing, but I'm gonna just keep it to myself and let it sink in a while before I jump any guns. So check it for yourself.

Beyond that, I've got my hands on some fairly new stuff that will be new to the show. Blood Brothers, Detachment Kit, Sparta, +/-, Love is All, and more, along with some sweet remixes from 13 & God and Four Tet.

So tune in this week, Thursday and Friday, 1pm to 3pm mountain time, on RadioBoise.

Back from Minnesota

Everything changes.

Nothing changes.

It was great being in Minnesota this past weekend. The reason for the reunion was, of course, not a happy one, as we were burying my grandmother. But even so, it was great to see everyone.

At first, re-meeting folks and saying overdue hellos and catching up, it seemed I'd lost track of so much. That everything and everyone had changed drastically since the last time I'd visited this part of the country.

But as the weekend wore on, the years fell away, the growth and movement and change breaking ahead of the onrush of memory and familiarity. We'd all grown apart and lived our lives and turned into different people, the sums of all our vast experiences, but at the same time we were still those kids who got together a couple times a year for nothing but fun.

I got to go ice fishing, and I got to sit and talk to people I don't get to sit and talk to enough. The hospitality, the company, everything, fit like a glove.

You may not be able to stay there, but you CAN go home, if only for a little while.

Grandma Myrtle

On Sunday, January 7th, Myrtle Kleaver passed away. She was my grandmother, my mom's mom.



She'd been battling health problems for some time, moving from assisted living to rehab and back again ever since she left her Minnesota home to get care in Alabama. She was 91.

I remember her as smart, funny, and tough in a no-BS sort of way. She was to me the prototype Minnesota Scandanavian matron, working hard every day in her garden and in her house, cooking old-timey northerner food, shoveling snow, knitting and crocheting blankets that I still lie under on the couch most nights.

To me she is a collection of sounds and smells as well as a steadfast image. Her big old musty house in Waverly, MN, the blankets that still carry the million smells of her home, the creaking of the tight spiral staircase going up to her attic, the quaver in her voice as she puzzled through an explanation ("er, um-a-num"), the lilt of her laugh when you were lucky enough to get her going. She had pointy-ended eyeglasses, of course, and her eyes behind them twinkled, as all good grandmother eyes should.



As kids, visits to her house as a kid were wonderful vacations. We'd roll down the three-tiered hill in her yard over and over, climbing back up the cinder block stairs each time to run over and do it again. They were just up the hill from a lake, and days would melt by in the sprints to and from the water. We'd swim, ski, fish, and swim some more, taking breaks only when we had to run up the hill for food or bed.

Her husband, Ray Kleaver, died when I was a senior in college, 1991. I remember that I took it hard. I was in finals, and I had no money, and I couldn't get back to Minnesota for the funeral. I don't know that I've ever forgiven myself for that.

And I find that now, this many years later, even after the trials she's gone through for months into years, even knowing that her health has been failing and that this end was a matter of how much time, this is very hard to bear. It hits me at weird times, mostly when I'm alone and thinking of something else entirely. The feeling rushes in like floodwater and fills my head, and before I know it I'm a sore-throated, weepy mess.

This Friday I'll fly out from home in Boise to Minneapolis, where I and my brother John will get a car and head to Buffalo to my Aunt Kris and Uncle Milt's house. We offered to get a room, but it seems more right to pile in on relatives' couches and floors, just like we always did. It seems like forever since I've been there.

We grow up and move and build lives and before you know it, we're all older, we're spread far and wide, and we begin the ritual of seeing each other only for weddings and funerals. It's a shame, but it's a process old as the family itself.

But, for this weekend, we'll gather together to remember Myrtle Kleaver. She was my grandmother, and she was a wonderful person. She is missed.

Master of the Blues

No, I ain't gone Lightnin Hopkins. I'm talking blue runs, as in skiing, as in kickass alpine at Targhee.

First off: I suck at skiing. I started the learning process at age 36, which means I was already brittle and frightened. You want to start skiing when you're fearless and made of rubber, sometime between ages 3 and 20.

But, after learning on ice in the dark up at Bogus, I persisted in this sport whose appeal entirely escaped me, largely because part of my deal included a pass for the following season. So, I went again and again and by the end of the year I was hooked.

Now this, my second full year of alpine action, I am finally seeing some progress. I can point myself downhill, keep my body squared, keep my weight on the balls of my feet, and generally maintain control.

I've skied a few black runs at Bogus (Wildcat, War Eagle, Paradise), and this past weekend at Targhee, out in Driggs, I attacked all the blue runs I could get my feet on and came out smiling like a maniac. The blues there are as steep or more so than the blacks at Bogus, so I like my changes heading back up to the local hill.

I've got some killer cameraphone photos I'm trying to post here, but they're not going through, so that'll have to wait. Know that the view from the top of Targhee of the Tetons in full sunny winter glory is pretty friggin amazing.

I love this skiing business.

This Is the New Year

Funny thing is, I do feel different. Ready to go. To start again.

To be better.

Resolutions are such a cliche it's not even worth discussing them, really. But in a way, what better time to make grand and sweeping changes than the beginning of the New Year.

I've got mine. Rather than go into the details, I'll just say that in 2007 I will work hard to become the person I would like to be. To make my self-image match my words and actions. To spend my time and money and love and energy in more appropriate ways.

It involves many things, and it will not be easy, but I'm more ready than I've ever been. It's time.

Targhee New Year

Tim and I and the hounds are off to Driggs today after work. For the second year, Sarah's family has been kind enough to let us stay at their cabin out there, so in Cathy's absence, I head off for a weekend in the snow.

And I mean snow.

Tons and tons of snow.

We'll be skiing and running the mutts ragged all weekend. A little beer, some good food, lots of reading.

Happy New Year

Rummy's Number

Keith Olbermann's got it.

Sure, he comes from the SportsCenter PrettyBoy journo past, and he is prone to self-righteous rants, but once in a while he nails it.

This time, he's gunning for Rumsfeld, and it's a hell of a piece.

Check it out here.

Love Winter

When the snow's on and the sun's out, I remember why I do love winter.

Will and I headed up to Bogus mid-day on Friday, and it was fantastic. A little bit of new snow and plenty of sunshine. Definitely the nicest weather I've ever skied in.

This weekend will be a series of meals and ski trips.

Merry Christmas.

Creeping Crud

Stuck in that sluggish middle ground between being sick and being healthy.

I had one bad day, last Thursday, when I was sick enough to skip work and sleep til noon-thirty. How often do you get to do that anymore? The next day I worked at home, feeling better enough but not wanting to cough whatever this was all over the office.

Over the weekend I flipped between being better and getting worse, never really doing either. And today, Wednesday, I'm still much the same.

I'm not riding hardly at all--only to work a couple times. I'm skipping the Y, and I'm laying around a lot. But still, the same crap. And it appears this is some sort of epidemic, spreading among co-workers silently and slowly. And the bad thing is, this is one of those illnesses where you mostly feel ok enough to come to work, so everyone does, and we keep spreading it around, and it'll take forever to go away.

Blah blah blah. I hate this shit and I'm ready to be done with it. The holidays are about here and I've skiing to do.

Ah, the bachelor life...

Loud rock music in the morning.

Bread baking at odd hours.

2-sided conversations with the dogs.

Omelets full of elk sausage for dinner.

Dumb, dumb comedy DVDs.

Reading a magazine at every meal.



Things are getting a little out of hand around here...

The Best of 2006

Everyone's doing it. So I am, too.

Here's another list to dump on the pile: The Top Ten Albums of 2006.

It's been a hell of a year.

Top Ten Albums of 2006

1. Califone ~ Roots and Crowns
2. Silversun Pickups ~ Carnavas
3. TV on the Radio ~ Return to Cookie Mountain
4. Cat Power ~ The Greatest
5. Band of Horses ~ Everything All the Time
6. Cut Chemist ~ The Audience’s Listening
7. Tapes n Tapes ~ The Loon
8. Electric President ~ Electric President
9. Yo La Tengo ~ I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
10. Gnarls Barkley ~ St. Elsewhere


Also, in pretty particular order:

Great stuff from old faves that just missed
The Flaming Lips ~ At War With the Mystics
Sonic Youth ~ Rather Ripped

Bright new big future stuff
Snowden ~ Anti Anti
The Black Angels ~ Passover
Art Brut ~ Bang Bang Rock and Roll

Big surprises--for me, anyway
Thom Yorke ~ The Eraser
Ms. John Soda ~ Notes and the Like

Women I love who should be on the list
Beth Orton ~ Comfort of Strangers
Neko Case ~ Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

How the hell did this not make it?
Built to Spill ~ You In Reverse
The Hold Steady ~ Boys and Girls in America

Also almost, but not quite, for one reason or another
The Evens ~ Get Evens
Ray LaMontagne ~ Til the Sun Turns Black
Psapp ~ The Only Thing I Ever Wanted
Yeah Yeah Yeahs ~ Show Your Bones
Brazilian Girls ~ Talk to La Bomb
Tom Waits ~ Orphans...

The Islam Dichotomy

Nicholas Kristof in today's NY Times makes a valiant attempt to address Western stereotypes of Muslims in an honest and direct manner. Kristof is one of my favorite columnists, and as he usually does, he presents a sympathetic and multifaceted argument.

But in the end, he leaves quite the white elephant sitting in the room. And it's a big one.

He makes the point that sure, many Muslim societies grab headlines with extremist political action or shocking personal retribution or reprehensible treatment of women.

But that's just the Arabs.

"Riverine or coastal" Muslims, like those in Indonesia, are a different sort. He says that while he finds stereotypes of Muslims profoundly warped, they are only so because, "Those stereotypes are largely derived from the less than 20 percent of Muslims who are Arabs, with Persians and Pashtuns thrown in as well. But the great majority of the world’s Muslims live not in the Middle East but here in Asia, where religion has mostly been milder."

So rather than debunk a stereotype, he localizes it, moving it offshore to the desert regions.

To be honest, I find it hard to fault this logic. Not that Indonesia is free of problems or extremism--think back to Bali in 05 or 02--but Kristof finds them to be more tolerant of other religions and of the women in their midst climbing the social and professional and societal ladders. And if we take a look at the direct interactions between America and Muslim societies, the problematic ones tend to follow Kristof's model.

In the end, Kristof offers us no easy way out of this dichotomy; indeed, no way out at all.

"There is a historic dichotomy between desert Islam — the austere fundamentalism of countries like Saudi Arabia — and riverine or coastal Islam, more outward-looking, flexible and tolerant. Desert Muslims grab the headlines, but my bet is that in the struggle for the soul of Islam, maritime Muslims have the edge."

I have to admit, this troubles me. Because the point of debunking a stereotype is in the end to defeat it on exactly that basis--that it is a stereotype. It's an extreme relativist pose, but it's the only one possible if we are to avoid the descent into action defined by prejudice. Not that I'm suggesting that's where Kristof takes this column, not at all. But that idea rises out of the other ideas presented here, and there's no refutation to be found.

Like most of the problems we as Westerners face in the rising clash between Islam and the West--if indeed those very terms have meaning any more, which is a topic for another day--there is no easy answer to the problem, if even an easy definition of it.

So in avoiding the predictable end to his column, Kristof maintains the dichotomy, leaving us to wonder whether he does believe that desert Islam is the problem, but that in the end they will lose their edge, and coastal Islam will become dominant.

It's an interesting proposition. It's something to think about both in watching the relationship unfold to see if he's right, and in examining our own thoughts and beliefs about the intrinsic value of Islam--even of religion itself--in its many forms.

Impending Departure

This Saturday, Cathy leaves for Myanmar.

She'll be there, traveling with our friend Christina, for about a month. Christmas and New Year's will both slide by before she returns.

Some are baffled by the fact that we often travel separately. Others are totally mystified as to why anyone in their right mind would want to go to Myanmar. I mean, Burma? WTF?

The answers are simple. We travel separately because we are adults who love to travel and our schedules, plans, and desired destinations don't always match up. We both traveled before, and we both continue now. We feel it makes our bond stronger.

And why Burma? Because. We were both captivated by SE Asia on our honeymoon, and it just happens that I couldn't swing a trip of this magnitude right now, while Cathy could, and this trip fit the bill that Cathy and Christina have been trying to fill--a good trip to take together--since they met in Zimbabwe many years ago.

I'm jealous, plain and simple.

This spring Cathy and I will travel together to Jamaica and NYC. Possibly to Amsterdam in the fall. And next year, I'm looking for a big extended outing to New Zealand. Hopefully. If I don't travel to Spain for a trip around the Vuelta.

It's nice to make plans.

But, back to the point of this post: I'm about to be without my wife for a month, including during the holidays.

It's a total drag, but I know she'll have a blast and I know how happy we'll be to see each other when she gets back. And a trip to Driggs over New Year's will soften the blow a good bit.

Happy, safe travels to her.

Weekends of Winter

These are the days of bread baking and late morning lingering over coffee. When getting through an entire New Yorker is justification enough for a Sunday well spent.

I've adjusted. I've accepted the loss of the frantically productive and recreative summer weekends, when not a minute can be wasted, and am enjoying the slower, calmer, more cerebral days of this season.

Last night the BCRP had a practice new year's eve party that was a great success. We had a great crowd, a solid lineup of live music and DJs, and a most decent haul at the door. And it's paved the way for more and more successful fundraising efforts, as we get our name connected in the community's mind to events like these.

And if we're out hobnobbing and fundraising all night long all weeekend, taking in tapas at 11pm on Friday night after the IRC event or downing a good share of Newcastles at the Bouquet all night Saturday, the days are slow and wonderful, long walks with the dogs in the Military Reserve, and copious amounts of coffee throughout the day.

Practice New Year's Eve

Tonight at the Bouquet in chilly downtown Boise, the Boise Community Radio Project will host a Practice New Year's Eve Party. We'll have a bunch of live bands including the wonderful Kris Doty as well as The Universal, who I've been meaning to catch for a while now.

Between sets we'll have RadioBoise DJs, and some special guests, spinning tracks from progressive decades as we count our way down to the current year.

This promises to be a hell of a fun night. If you're in town, come check it out.

Snow on That Thar Hill

Winter is officially here.

Bogus has a couple feet sitting on it by now. They opened for business on Wednesday.

I haven't been up yet. Wanted to go today, but work won. I'm hoping to get up there during the week next week, as I've sworn off weekend skiing up there after last year's experiences.

I'm looking forward to my first turns of the year. See what I forgot, and see if I can turn into a decently sub-par skier by the end of the year.

Wahoo.

Thanks Gave, and On with the Month

Seems we've hit a brief downhill slide.

That's always a weird turn of phrase. In one sense, all being downhill from here seems like a bad thing. As if things can only get worse.

But then again, when it's all downhill, it's all easy going, coasting, no work left, just enjoy the fruits of what you went through to get to the top of the hill. So let's take that meaning here.

Ma Hess is out of the hospital and recovering in the comfort of her own home.

Grandma K got out of the rehab center not only to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the family, but the next day for leftovers as well. "That's the best part," she said, so they sprung her and brought her home for a sandwich.

And AP is also home recovering quickly. He's still got a short ways to go to get out of these particular woods, but hopefully the end is in sight.

Me, I ate a lot, rode a bit, and laid around more than I can remember doing in quite some time. It was nice, but it's nice to get back to it as well.