Circumference

mmmmmm... alphabet soup!

Science, universities, corporations, NGOs, medicine, government: is there any area that doesn’t rely heavily on acronyms? My days are painfully hobbled with them, and I can think of few careers that are acronym-lite. ‘Twas not always so:

Acronyms have become so ubiquitous that we look for them even where they don’t exist. They are a major source of the folk etymologies that ping around the internet, etymologies for words that aren’t actually acronyms. “Fuck” isn’t short for “for unlawful carnal knowledge”, “posh” has nothing to do with “port out, starboard home”, and a “tip”, while it might be to insure promptness, certainly doesn’t derive its name from that phrase. All these words are much older than the profusion of acronyms in English.

Discussing what he calls the “the seductive quasi-certainty of the caps-lock key,” Robert Lane Greene lays out a very interesting history of acronyms (its America’s fault)  and their influence on how we think, act, and write.

Maps can be surprisingly sharp vehicles for satire, as Yanko Tsvetkov shows with his Mapping Stereotypes series. He has made up a dozen or so maps of Europe each labeled according to the stereotypes of a specific country or group. See examples below of the German outlook or click through for many more.  I love these and hope to see more – perhaps a version for the US? or even a global map? Can’t think of any place that isn’t richly inhabited with many grossly inaccurate stereotypes.

Europe according to Germans

Europe according to Germans (detail)

Monbiot declares that “the process is dead:”

In 2012 the only global deal for limiting greenhouse gas emissions – the Kyoto Protocol – expires. There is no realistic prospect that it will be replaced before it elapses: the existing treaty took five years to negotiate and a further eight years to come into force. In terms of real hopes for global action on climate change, we are now far behind where we were in 1997, or even 1992. It’s not just that we have lost 18 precious years. Throughout the age of good intentions and grand announcements we spiralled backwards.

Slate is insisting on (and sponsoring) more discussion about geoengineering:

The only thing more reckless than embracing geoengineering, however, would be to dismiss it. Yes, it’s a dangerous, crazy idea. In a rational world, we would never consider it. But we don’t live in a rational world. (If we did, subsidies for the fossil fuel industry wouldn’t be12 times greater than subsidies for renewable energy.) We live in a world that likes quick fixes and easy answers, and in that world, geoengineering has a lot of political and economic appeal. The real question is: Will we pursue it in an intelligent way that helps us manage the risks of global warming and deepens our understanding of how the climate system works, or will it simply turn into, as one blogger put it, “a ramifying suite of mega-engineering wet dreams” that leads to a whole new dimension of chaos?

And some scientists have devoted countless hours and dollars to model the likelihood of scientific explanations of how Moses parted the red sea:

“And the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided,” reads Exodus, chapter 14. Sounds unlikely? Probably, but apart from the “LORD” bit, physics doesn’t think it’s impossible.

Sigh. That’s all for this week.

Love them or hate them, ecological diversity isn’t something we often associate with cities. And yet,  that just what this New York Magazine article does. Turns out that in addition to those grubby species that do extremely well in crowded, over-constructed, garbage-rich environments (I am looking at you, pigeons), a number of other wild creatures are drawn to all that cities offer:

(The coyote) was as at home in the city as she might have been anywhere else. This can sound backward. You would expect coyotes to be perfectly happy living in the wilderness, if not in Rye Brook then at least a few hours north on the Taconic, far beyond Westchester County. But people who study coyotes are finding that the creatures are drawn to cities, with their large woodland areas, small rodents, and lack of large predators.

The article draws interesting parallels between the dense human diversity of modern NYC with its pre-urban past:

Like most large cities, New York was built where river meets ocean. But the network of waterways and islands that make up our harbor—the Hudson, Bronx, Passaic, Hackensack, and Raritan rivers; the creeks, kills, narrows, and tidal straits; the bays, inlets, basins, and coves—is one of the most intricate and ecologically complex estuaries in the world. This variety of place attracted a variety of species, all living in proximity, and as a result, New York was vibrant, dense, and diverse before it even was founded. We were a natural capital first.

Ultimately, however, the authors go perhaps too far:

An ecological feedback loop is a natural extension of the idea that nature exists in the city, but it requires a change of thinking that is equally profound: There is no difference between urban nature and rural nature. It is all one ecology, adjusting and cross-pollinating in the face of change. This can be disturbing, since local stresses threaten to disrupt wildlife hundreds of miles away. But it is, in fact, a hopeful idea. If New York City’s ecology has taught us anything, it is that nature likes intrusions—counts on them, even. Change makes for vibrancy. We are not just a city of bedbugs and rats; we are a wellspring for regional vitality.

I’ll grant that it is all one ecology, and that differentiating between human and the animals, what is built and what is natural, isn’t helpful or even true, but whatever “vibrancy” nature gains via “intrusions” and “change” related to the urban is a pale shadow of what existed before concrete smothered forests and streams became streets.

Still, these ideas are reminiscent of other unintentional examples of when places written off as lifeless or ecologically useless turn out to be exotic habitats (such as military firing ranges and the DMZ supporting species that had otherwise gone locally extinct).

Also, my vote for best line in a piece of journalism this week: “(The New York Police and Parks commissioners) are quietly ironing out interdepartmental coyote protocols.”

In a talk about climate change policy today Gwyn Prins, a professor from LSE, mentioned in passing a  journalistic gem from the failed Copenhagen Conference last spring that I had completely missed. It’s a recording from the inner sanctum of the climate conference, a cramped office space where Obama, Merkel, Sarkozy, and other representatives from the richest countries tried to hash out the basics of the agreement that never was. It’s titled “How China and India Sabotaged the UN Climate Summit,” but really it’s so much more: it is a glimpse into a political world we read about everyday but can rarely get past the gloss and into the nitty-gritty. Hearing how these leaders speak to each other, as well as how national stereotypes emerge, is fascinating. It’s also amazing just to hear how much English is used – we all know it as the world’s language, but to actually hear most of these very diverse people use it is still surprising. But more than anything its worth listening to for the negotiations themselves, listening in like a fly on the wall to the play by play as hope died for any kind of meaningful policy to emerge out of Copenhagen.



It may be small comfort to anyone (and really, who hasn’t?) who has ever gotten lost in an endless suburban development full of identical houses and looping streets, but some of these communities create gorgeous geometries when seen  from above. Christoph Gielen, a German photographer, has flown above dozens of these and other sprawling complexes in the American southwest taking photos that capture another perspective of their rigidly planned urbanism:

The Sun Belt suburbs depicted in these photographs are “absolutely self-contained,” Gielen suggests; many of them, he adds, are “not changing anymore.” They are static, crystalline and inorganic. Indeed, some of these streets frame retirement communities: places to move to once you’ve already been what you’ve set out to be. This isn’t sprawl, properly speaking. They are locations in their own right, spatial endpoints of certain journeys. (NYTimes)

Check out the entire article here and the companion slideshow.

In support of HTML5 (the latest internet coding technology) as well as their airy browser, Google’s Chrome team has taken online browser art (such as it is) to the next level. Using one of Arcade Fire’s somber rockers, this interactive music video places the lyric’s melancholy reflections on growing up in the suburbs in your old neighbourhood, mixing up boring old Google Maps and StreetView with some 3d graphics to create an evocative and moody piece. Click the link, enter the address you grew up on, and take a ride on the new HTML5. It’s called The Wilderness Downtown.

After a long delay (due to a concoction of two parts summer, four parts fieldwork, and 1.5 parts laziness) we are back! Fall is in the air and geography students are in their labs, and I am back at the keyboard ready to relay  more earth and environment related opinions, insights, and tidbits for your delectation. Stay tuned and come back often, y’hear?