Things To Be Happy About

Between 1991-1995 I compiled and kept a list of things I was happy about as a response to the book '14,000 Things To Be Happy About'

Today is a good day to re-visit that list, presented here as it was:

• late night outdoor basketball
• snow storms
• skyscrapers
• a fine cup of coffee
• driving cross country
• catalog shopping
• liz phair songs
• cedar point
• ayn rand novels
• falling in love in the spring (or any time)
• freshly cut flowers displayed in a vase
• vinyl records
• achievement
• AUDI V8 quattro
• sioux city sarsasparilla
• all you can eat buffets
• Calvin and Hobbes comic strip books
• the smell of burning leaves at dusk on a crisp Autumn night
• seeing a live performance of a band you love
• taking late night walks down the middle of the street in the summer
• doubleheader baseball games that last way into the night
• ice skating on a neighborhood pond
• sipping hot tea on a cold, wet afternoon as you look out the window
• campfires
• boating in Lake Erie, Michigan, or any special lake in the Great Lakes region
• baseball lingo
• Kids In The Hall
• porchin'
• a sudden evening severe thunderstorm to conclude a hot summer day
• a nice car with a nice stereo
• the British Isles
• draining puss
• drinking cold well water from a garden hose
• relaxing with a friend and smoking a cigar
• warm summer days and cool summer nights
• that empty feeling
• femininity
• using a precise scientific measuring device such as a Brunton compass
• a cottage on the lake
• finding money you had forgotten about
• returning home
• home run derby
• riding your bike on deserted streets at night
• your favorite comforter
• chicken and broccoli
• parody and sarcasm
• cute as a button girls
• art, especially architecture, that gives you an esthetically overwhelming feeling and you say "that's so cool!"
• kisses and kissing
• tennis on cool evenings under the lights, the U.S. Open would be an example.
• wood burning stoves
• chocolate
• the sounds a furnace makes between running
• chopping wood
• driving at night with your high beams on when it snows
• bundling up against the cold
• wool pants
• trivia
• the crackling sound of lightning when listening to A.M. radio
• A.M. talk radio
• ice
• the first snow of the year
• hot spiced cider
• potato soup
• table tennis
• making lists
• driving on summer nights with the windows down
• going to the library
• swimming in the rain (especially at night)
• PowerMac
• sitting at a large frosty window of a coffee house with a big bowl of hot cocoa as jumbo flakes of snow fall outside
• natural materials
• reading a quality morning newspaper before starting the day
• watching women's tennis
• daylight savings time

Unusual Trades In Baseball History

For only the fifth time in Major League Baseball history, a player was traded as compensation for a manager.

The Boston Red Sox sent Mike Aviles to the Toronto Blue Jays and in return received a pitcher and the Blue Jays manager John Farrell.

See NYT: Red Sox Make a Trade to Get a New Manager

However, the most unique baseball trade involved the legendary Ernie Harwell. In 1948 he became the only broadcaster to ever be traded for a player when Branch Rickey acquired him from Atlanta (source: USAToday).

Boats Are The Antithesis Of Performance

Boats. Yachts. Once a person gets one they can't stop thinking of it. It steals their free moments and their concentration. You can't think of anything else. You have fallen in love.

But a boat is different from a lover in that is not hidden. A boat makes a siren call to you and everyone knows it. Or should know it.

Linking poor performance to yacht purchases is a well known phenomenon. See Slate: The CEO Bought a Yacht?: Then it's time to sell.

I mention this because the Florida Marlins fired Ozzie Guillen as their manager after one dismal year.

Last fall after the White Sox let him go, he talked about buying a 62 foot boat then the Marlins hired him. And he got his boat and his Miami dock slip for the boat. And the Marlins had a horrible season.

This should not have surprised anyone.

One Day I'll Be Obsessed With That

I might be just a little obsessed with Sharon Van Etten's 'One Day' from her album Epic.

That is if listening to a song every day and finding as many live versions as possible can be considered obsessed. This is one of those rare songs that never becomes tiresome and I get some new insight from each performance.

There are times when I sing along and the thought I have is "this is the perfect song".

But maybe that is just me.

Some of my favorite performances:

 


Sharon Van Etten performs 'One Day' for WBEZ from WBEZ on Vimeo.

powered by Splicd.com

For me, the song puts me in the mind of of my favorite sonnet. 'I Know I Am But Summer to your Heart' by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The use of the seasons as metaphors for seasons of love and the wish that just as summer comes after winter, love can return after leaving.

Here is Edna in 1922:

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of spring. 

Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.

And here is Sharon:

Snow is outside but I'm by your fire I feel all the love you'll bring
You gotta see how we can see this out
Summer in mind and spring by your side
You'll see all the love we'll keep
Gotta see that we couldn't be there 

Here is a different St. Vincent performing 'Surgeon', one of my top songs of 2011.

Beer Today

Some craft beer news->

-NPR: Canning Factories On Wheels Rev Up The Beer 'Canvolution'

-"Craft Beer" and "Gastropub" added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary

-BeerAdvocate: Number of US brewers reaches 125-year high with 2,126 open and 1,252 in planning

-NPR: Home Brew Petitioners To POTUS: Release The Beer Recipe and SF Weekly: Sign a Petition to Release the White House Honey Ale Recipe

Lyme Disease And Top Predators

Lyme disease is a growing problem, reaching epidemic status in some areas.

See:
NPR SciFri: Tick Talk: Lyme Disease Under The Microscope
Vancouver Sun: B.C. must act to combat Lyme 'disease explosion,' scientist says

The most common explanation is that warmer winters lead to better survivability and hence a growing range for the disease. I took CDC data from 2001 - 2010 to show the change in reported Lyme disease cases from 2001 - 2010:

 
The NYT reports on a new study indicating a plausible relationship between coyotes and foxes and Lyme disease carrying white footed mice: Predators, Prey and Lyme Disease

The hypothesis is with coyotes expanding east they are displacing foxes. And since mice are a main component in the fox diet this change in the top predator is contributing to a decline in mice mortality and this leads to more cases of Lyme disease because there are more mice.

Why are coyotes expanding their range to the Eastern U.S.?
[NatGeo: Coyotes Now at Home in Eastern U.S.]

Prior to 1850 coyotes lived in the plains and western U.S.
[via NWF]

While the wolf was top predator for most of the United States
 
 [via NPS]
(the lack of wolves in the southeast United States could be due to this being part of the historical range of Mountain Lions)

Wolves and foxes occupy different niches in the ecological ladder and are able to coexist in a shared habitat whereas coyotes occupy the range between these Canids hence wolves/coyotes and coyotes/foxes compete with each other for the same food with the smaller species the loser in these interactions. By extirpating wolves from their historic range beginning around 1850 humans set the stage for the expansion of coyotes. As coyotes became the top predators the fox populations declined. As this happened the population of the favorite foods of wolves and foxes exploded (deer and mice). As these former prey populations have grown so have their ability to be disease vectors.

The Inter-connectedness of Things

Therefore, the killing of wolves has likely led to a potential lyme disease epidemic.

An unbalanced ecosystem missing its top predator is nudged by the perturbation of climate chaos; and the result is an explosion in cases of Lyme disease.

"The Earth isn't fragile; we are"

Bio News

Some recent news about putting biology to work in areas I get excited about. Biofuels (specifically biobutanol) and aquaponics (aquaculture + hydroponics).

(Biofuels)
DesMoinesRegister: Ethanol plants may shift to biobutanol

GCC: Study finds biomass-to-liquids fuels could be economically competitive at current price levels

SciAm: First Dedicated Biorefinery Could Wean Hawaii Off Imported Oil

Record-Eagle: Teacher to launch biodiesel fuel plant

(Aquaponics)
UpNorthLive: Grand Traverse Academy Starts Aquaponics

HuffPost: A Tour Of Chicago's Amazing Vertical Farm

The Plant is a fish hatchery, hydroponic garden, commercial kitchen, and brewery for both beer and kombucha tea. Perhaps best of all, the waste from one part of farm serves as raw material for another, making it a net-zero energy system...

 The Plant (official site)

This Is What Peak Oil Looks Like

These things are related.

1. TheAtlanticWire: Suddenly, the United Arab Emirates Is Interested in Green Energy

2. ArsTechnica: We've hit "peak oil"; now comes permanent price volatility

Since 2005, the global production of oil has remained relatively flat, peaking in 2008 and declining since, even as demand for petroleum has continued to increase. The result has been wild fluctuations in the price of oil as small changes in demand set off large shocks in the system.

3. Total Vehicle Miles peaked in 2005 and have declined since then.
Federal Highway Administration

Projecting The Economic Gains Of Nationwide Carbon Pricing

The Analysis Group released the report The Economic Impacts of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative on Ten Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States. It is a study of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative agreement between Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Findings included regional economic gains of more than $1.6 billion and 16,000 new jobs in the three years of the program.

The population of these 10 northeastern states is 40,494,453.

The population of the United States is 308,745,538.

(via census.gov)

Projecting the job and economic gains of carbon cap and trade for these 10 states to the United States as a whole gives (over three years):

-105,990 jobs created

-more than $10 billion in economic gain

For comparison, the Keystone XL Pipeline which is in the news has been projected by the Cornell Global Labor Institute to eliminate more jobs than it will create.

[original news item via ThinkProgress]

2012 Predictions

My 2011 predictions had mixed results.

I was definitely wrong about Twitter being a fad; Bonderman having a great pitching year; and alien life being confirmed though the Mono Lake announcement got people excited. The others are a mixed bag.

The ones I got really right were Verlander having an amazing year; Ford's improving reputation (sales were up 11% for 2011); almost all shoe companies started carrying minimalist shoes; marriage and home ownership continued to decline; suburbs are being abandoned; Ming Tsai's One Pot Meals (wok cooking) was a Top 100 cookbook on Amazon; and many people cancelled their cable TV service in 2011.

Here's what I am thinking about 2012:

• It will be Microsoft's make-it or break-it year. Windows 8 and Windows Phone takes off or Zunes away. Regardless, Microsoft will be out of the operating system business in less than 10 years.

• Chia will be the new superfood fad, and the fad will turn into a diet

• A new masculinity emerges in hip hop. It'll be introspective and vulnerable. Childish Gambino and Tyler the Creator both had songs in 2011 that represent this new style; Shad had it in 2010; and Jay Z's song about his daughter is what will propel it to the big time.

• Sharon Van Etten!

• Stephen Colbert's aphorism of "reality has a well known liberal bias" will become more self-evident

• People will really get tired of the phrases "everything is better with bacon" and "I try to keep it simple and let the food speak for itself"

• People who call themselves film critics will get tired of Wes Anderson while Tarantino gets elevated to even more mythical status. Movie goers will love Wes Anderson.

• Still no Arrested Development movie.

• Cable companies will realize they started as aggregators and that is how they can make the most money now. Everything will be packet based.

• The conventional wisdom will finally draw the connections between energy supply - food prices - wealth aggregation - access to jobs and the Arab Spring/Occupy movements.

• The debate of "is Internet access a fundamental human right?" will get noisier.

• The world won't end like in the movie 2012 though I would not be surprised to see unprecedented climate chaos that displaces a large number of people.

• Apple won't make a traditional stand-alone TV, but really, they are going to put apps on the Apple TV this year.

• The next iPhone will do more than a Star Trek tri-corder and will be able to scan reality to make virtual maps.