Letters to the Editor
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Maya not "Mayans"
Mayan is an adjective, not a noun. The Mayan people are know as Maya or Mayas. The language they speak is Mayan.
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Oops.
Known, not know. I knew I should have previewed that before posting.
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Science ain't politics (or at least it shouldn't be)
Silverback's ridicule of 'The idea that humans are "causing" climate change strikes me as about so homocentric as the proposition that humans were present at the creation of the universe. . .' is somewhat disingenuous. NO credible scientific authority claims that human activity is CAUSING global warming, but rather that we are accelerating and amplifying a natural cycle via a positive feedback mechanism. Misstating the position of one's opponent in a scientific debate is not a valid form of argumentation. Very effective tactic in politics, though.
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Mayan-Maya
Thanks Jules, I fixed it.
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Homo-redux
There is no doubt that adding six billion humans over the course of the last couple of centuries, an increasing percentage of whom are merrily vaporizing increasing amounts of per-capita carbon into the atmosphere, has done a dandy job of accelerating the retreat of the ice caps. The point is that the current retreat, one among many, started back when the glaciers were in southern France and south of Kansas City, and our ancestors were blowing paint against their hands in the caves of Lascaux.
The Illinois graph (and now I can't get the link to work) makes it look like we were already headed toward the greatest retreat of ice on the poles in the last three-quarters of a million years, although probably still more than when the ichtyosaurs were swimming in western Kansas. The only question is whether human acceleration will further decrease the ice caps and increase the water level, or just get us there sooner.
There is also no doubt that Western Civ of the 21st Century is the softest time and place in the history of the planet to be a H. sapiens. The measure is in our waistlines and our head-count. Doesn't mean that living in "civilization" is a good thing. Ruth and I fled the concrete beehives for the hills of the Ozarks a quarter-century ago.
The scientific and technological revolution that made the head-count possible is younger than some of our oak trees. My current best guess is that it is an evolutionary dead end, and that H. sapiens are genetically predisposed to conquer adversity but not to suffer success. Perhaps the acceleration of climate change will turn out to be a humane thing, if it means there are fewer of us surplus humans when the water runs out.
The mainstream media and the blogosphere are full of claims that humans are "causing" climate change. We make Ozymandias look like a shrinking violet.
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Old fat guys with three chins
Hilarious! It got me thinking.
What if the Creator (I'm part Native American AND Christian, I claim the right to say the "Creator" without specifying which one I have in mind!) I think they're all one anyway! where was I.
What if the Creator sees the old fat white guy with three chins, in a business suit with a bejeweled flag pin on the lapel, escorting his J.C. Penney-clad wife to the Navigator after lunch at Bob Evans, the SAME as the hummingbird? Equally magnificent as a created creature, equally shortsighted and hobbled by weaknesses and smallness beyond its control, and equally infused (or whatever the word is) with a measure of the Divine nature?
Any person of any religion can try this exercise. Look at the most despicable, unclean, weak, wrong-acting, misguided, slobby, wrong-headed, boorish, sinning-against-the-planet, warmongering, lazy or slacking, sex-needing, me-firsty, future-not-planning, creature of your choice. Try to look at that creature the way a supposed benevolent and understanding Creator would. Of course many followers of many religions do just the opposite. This is what I personally think religion calls us to try to do. This doesn't mean the old fat white guy with three chins won't destroy the planet and all of us with it. It doesn't mean he and his ilk shouldn't be prevented to the best of our ability to do so. It just means that to me, religion involves the idea that all creatures have some inherent part of the Divine in them, even the ones I think are all despicable. Who am I to think of that other creature as all despicable, be that other creature a welfare recipient, an arrogant person of the opposite sex who dissed me, Ted Haggard, or Dick Cheney. I prefer to believe the Creator loves Dick Cheney in the same way He, She, or It loves that hummingbird. I don't have to love Dick Cheney the same as the hummingbird, because I am a flawed and weak despicable creature myself. Well I think you get the idea. I don't know why I wanted to post this...I just had a moment of pity or something or other for the old white guy with three chins and his misguidedness and the whole sorry wreck of humanity, hummingbirds too.
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I'm with him, but more expansive...
I like the idea of blaming Reagan, but I think more appropriately the entire Republican party is a better step. Everything I've seen them do during my generation has been bad.