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Earlier this year, I read a couple of books that made me want to plant a forest. So, that’s what I ended up doing.
The first book was Barkskins, by Annie Proulx, and the second was The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson.
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Barkskins is set in early New France and tells a story of several generations of foresters. Spanning the globe and exploring the cultural and economic relationship of humans with forests and trees, this is a story about forest industrialists, Indigenous peoples, and the loss of old-growth forests.
Even if you think discussing aliens is ridiculous, hear me out Legitimate mysteries are being documented, and it s worth thinking about how we would respond to revelations.
By Ezra Klein New York Times May 13, 2021 11:28am Text size Copy shortlink:
The most curious subplot in the news right now is the admission, at the most senior levels of the U.S. government, that the military services have collected visuals, data and testimonials recording flying objects they cannot explain; that they are investigating these phenomena seriously; and that they will, in the coming months, report at least some of their findings to the public. It feels, at times, like the beginning of a film where everyone is go
Bird Song of the Day
#COVID19
At reader request, I’ve added this daily chart from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site.
I feel I’m engaging in a macabre form of tape-watching. All the charts are becoming dull approaching nominal, if you accept the “new normal” of cases, for example.
“Many police officers spurn coronavirus vaccines as departments hold off on mandates” [WaPo]. “Police officers were among the first front-line workers to gain priority access to coronavirus vaccines. But their vaccination rates are lower than or about the same as those of the general public, according to data made available by some of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies. The reluctance of police to get the shots threatens not just their own health, but also the safety of people they’re responsible for guarding, monitoring and patrolling, experts say. At the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, just 39 percent of employees have g
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Last year, about a month into the pandemic, I reached for something comforting: the 1992 science-fiction novel “Red Mars,” by Kim Stanley Robinson. I’d first read it as a teen-ager, and had reread it a handful of times by my early twenties. Along with its two sequels, “Green Mars” and “Blue Mars,” the novel follows the first settlers to reach the red planet. They establish cities, break away from Earth’s control, and transform the arid surface into a garden oasis, setting up a new society in the course of a couple hundred years. On the cover of my well-worn copy, Arthur C. Clarke declared it “the best novel on the colonization of Mars that has ever been written.” In my youth, I considered it a record of what was to come.