Now at 85, having retired 3 years ago after nearly 60 years working to preserve the health of our oceans, I am delighted to read this profound summary of our nation's progress in doing so as well. Earth Day has always been a most special day for me - worked on Santa Barbara spill cleanup in 1969.
Now at 85, having retired 3 years ago after nearly 60 years working to preserve the health of our oceans, I am delighted to read this profound summary of our nation's progress in doing so as well. Earth Day has always been a most special day for me - worked on Santa Barbara spill cleanup in 1969.
Great work, Alan. With whom did you work? I started at USGS Marine Geology in 1989. Besides geophysics, our work also focused on geologic hazards. The bottom core sedimentary record showed very clearly the fluctuations in our climate that increased or decreased the generation of micro organisms at the bottom of our food chain, as well as ice cores in the Arctic that correlated a significant acceleration of the changes in our climate, as well as concentration of radioactivity matching nuclear testing. Interesting stuff. I was an engineering tech that designed and built the equipment to carry out the studies and operate it at sea and in the ice.
I never would have retired, but the Taliban took over control of our Congress in 1994 and, since their book said nothing about science, they elimnated massive amounts of Federal science funding across the board. Many millions of NSF funding was left hanging when the Reduction in Force took effect in 1995. There was no one left to carry out the studies across all Federal agencies. The saddest moment in my career.
Yes, amazing the concerted, organized, determined agents of -- what? -- pure and driven hatred against science, humanities, nature?
I hate to sound academic, particularly in view of your personal brush with the monsters, but the Powell memo planned all this back in August, 1971. It set out to gut higher ed, to replace K-12 with mechanized, computer-gradable orgies of standardized testing, to turn state legislatures over to ALEC-cloned Republican vigilantes, and also turn the former Supreme Court over to the billionaire predators.
At least, Ransom, you had some good years with some good people before the living dead arrived with their sickles.
No worries from me, I am an academic. I spent a career teaching math at El Camino. College in Torrance Ca.
I watched as the caliber of input declined over the years. When I retired in 2019 they had dispensed with all of our remedial courses in the name of "not hurting the students feelings". I watched as they watered down the curriculum and brought in computers.
The math hasn't changed but what they expect from the students is far less. Nothing but pushing buttons. No thinking of the deeper concepts.
The old Methuselah's that taught me used chalk, period. It was a big day when they had colored chalk. They'd draw some wiggles on the board and look at us and say "Now visualize it moving this way."
Now i've got Mathematica on my computer. Real time rotations and animations of surfaces in 3D plotted for you.
I learned to see the behavior from the equations. It's fun to be able to see them in color and manipulate them.
I worry that today's students are missing out on visualization and imagination skills. The computer does it for them.
Time will tell what their lack of such skills will be. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. My favorite math book was written by Hardy, in 1906. I still take it around with me. He was such a great author. I've got a reprints of ten years of the Math Tripos exams 1910-1920. Three day exams covering everything.
I'm pleased to say that I have solved many of these old problems, at least one from each year. I still play around with them.
Oh to be in the room with Hardy and Littlewood , Russell and Ramanujan. What minds. No computers just hardcore analysis.
Pithy, eloquent you are, Bob, on the reduction of imagination in "higher" ed today.
Equally on-target you are for the pre-Powell memo days when great figures loomed large.
One of the keys the billionaires used to number, commodify, package all life, was when the ALEC part of post-Powell memo got all the Republican legislatures and many Dem ones, too, to reduce public aid to higher ed. First casualty, tenure. Easier just to hire tens of thousands of "contingent" labor -- no benefits, cheap pay, no longevity.
Second casualty, student debt, as the vulture banks swept in.
Third, all the neutering as cowardice ruled the getting of the few tenure slots remaining.
Add in the zombie HR which took over. The trigger warnings necessary to avoid offending any darlings. And the group-think in retreat by all to group identity safety silos.
The billionaires won who funded Heritage, Hoover, ALEC, the Federalist Society, Claremont, and all the rest of the far-right bequeathing us Citizens United, social media hate algorithms, MAGA, and the Clarence court.
Agents of GREED, my friend. The ruling principle of our times.
Especially ironic that many of these greed-mongers pretend to be Christians; their Jesus would smite them all and turn over their money-lending tables.
Let's fight back. Want some inspiration? Check out Rivera Sun's Dandelion Insurrection, a three-part piece of speculative fiction that is easy to read and hard to forget.
Also inspirational (frightening?) is Peter Brannon's The Ends of the World about previous mass extinctions. The world had taken this route before, although it has been set off by meteors and volcanos rather than creatures inhabiting it. "The good thing about science, is that it is true whether you believe it or not." Tyson
Seems interesting for its non-violent means, and for what appears to be good awareness of others in history who have effected needed change.
Today, I just received Max Wyman's "The Compassionate Imagination: How the arts are central to a functioning democracy." Another reader on Heather's site recommended it. Sometimes it takes awhile to receive, but so good to delve into such things. And better if there's apt way to apply to things Heather or her many good, thoughtful commenters may say.
Thank you and thank you for the Max Wyman recommendation. I will order it when I get home. Fascists lack imagination, among other things, and democracy thrives on it.
My online scouting shows the author (a Canadian) may be a bit more polite than I'd like regarding what our billionaire predators have done to our humanities. Will find out.
Love what you say of imagination -- who thrives on it, who lacks it.
By the way, since last exchange, have found copy here in Japan ("Dandelion Insurrection"). Arrives in three days. I'll keep your commenting tab and let you know if I can aptly apply any of the Rivera Sun to any of Heather's.
I was one of about twenty "environment, science, and technology" focused foreign service officers (State Department diplomats) who dedicated years of training to work bilaterally and multilateral in support of protecting the global environment and enhancing scientific cooperation. When Clinton came to the White House, his people ironically decided that such a dedicated coterie was not needed. For most of us, that pretty much ended our careers. It was a sad day indeed, Ransom!
Clinton was a Wall Street Corporatist. He supported and helped pass more Republican legislation than any Repuplican could ever have done, with a Dem majority Congress. If we manage to keep the POTUS and the Senate, and regain the House, those careeres will become important again. We must contribute $$ to effective organizations that back the candidates that have the realistic chances, as well as the GOTV youth organizations. It's now or never.
Ransom, I suspect that contributing money is a less potent force than how we spend our money and what we refuse to spend our money on while persuading those we can to spend their money "earth-wisely" and most important, to NOT spend our money in earth-destructive ways.
If Biden had not won, it would have happened again. Vashon? I ran the little ship that did the sub-bottom imags of all the landlides (still hazardous) on the long Southeast side of Vashon Is. as well as all of Puget sound. You on that beautiful island?
My uncle ran the cal lab at Keyport in the early 80's and I worked as a calibrater there after the Marines and before grad school at UCSB.. Sort of a full circle moment for me.
My dad was involved in designing the first 3D range in Dabob late '50's early 60's. He worked at APL out of UW. Sometimes I would get to go with him. I used to fish off the pier there as a kid. In those days they had to keep an electronic tech onsite for the vacuum tube computer.
Had to correct for the drift of the tube as they warmed up. Used the heat from the computer to heat the building.
Yes, we have been here going on 37 years! Just now I am looking at the diminishing snowpack on the Olympics. I think they are using LiDAR scanning tech to map the contours of Colvos passage (maybe all of Puget Sound?). What agency was in charge of the imaging? So interesting that you were part of that!
The work continues despite the Taliban because fundamentalists lack the imagination and creativity to do anything other than STOP or destroy. That is a negative force. Something deep inside all of us requires imagination and inquiry. I believe that to be as hardwired in us as negativity and mass destruction. And I believe that energy is growing. Just look no further than the moss that grows on cyclotrons after rain.
Newt, Tom Delay and that crew of self-righteous vipers really did a number on so much that was worthwhile. The Taliban is a good name for them, a precursor to our Russian mafia in Congress.
I'm with you Ransom. I've seen the vanishing of the glaciers on Mt Rainier since I was a kid. It's sobering.
I was at UCSB studying in the math department '83-'90. Knew a couple Geo grad students. Were you in Isla Vista in those halcyon days?
My uncle, Charles Woelke was head of the Shellfish lab in Quilcene Wa. He brought oysters from Japan after the war and seeded the bay. Grew up eating all the oysters we could handle. They're all gone now. But as a kid we used to get the water boiling before going out to pull the shrimp and crab pots. That's fresh seafood.
He told me in the '70's that the salmon run was going away. Sad.
Memories of that fresh seafoodтАжAs kids in Rhode Island in the 60тАЩs ,we would walk down to a deserted beach ,search for the squirt holes and dig up steamer clams to throw in the pot.
Here in Florida weтАЩre using oysters with,as you probably know, their amazing filtration rate of 50/gallons/day to clean up our man-made mess in the lagoon.
Growing up in South Florida after WWII, the waters around were still clear, the fish and crawfish (Florida lobster) were bountiful, and life was good. As kids are wont to do, I thought it would last forever, Paradise.
One of the family stories IтАЩm most proud of is of him and my grandfather going across the island to get some crawfish (Florida lobster) for supper. Dad said they were stacked like cordwood under the rock ledges, and he began to stuff his croker sack with them. Grandfather told him to put them back, saying, тАЬWe only take what we need for today, son.тАЭ
Yes, it is! We are so used to thanking military service men and women (rightfully so), I realize now that we should extend an equal measure of thanks to those protecting the Earth.
Alan A. Allen, Retired
Now at 85, having retired 3 years ago after nearly 60 years working to preserve the health of our oceans, I am delighted to read this profound summary of our nation's progress in doing so as well. Earth Day has always been a most special day for me - worked on Santa Barbara spill cleanup in 1969.
Great work, Alan. With whom did you work? I started at USGS Marine Geology in 1989. Besides geophysics, our work also focused on geologic hazards. The bottom core sedimentary record showed very clearly the fluctuations in our climate that increased or decreased the generation of micro organisms at the bottom of our food chain, as well as ice cores in the Arctic that correlated a significant acceleration of the changes in our climate, as well as concentration of radioactivity matching nuclear testing. Interesting stuff. I was an engineering tech that designed and built the equipment to carry out the studies and operate it at sea and in the ice.
I never would have retired, but the Taliban took over control of our Congress in 1994 and, since their book said nothing about science, they elimnated massive amounts of Federal science funding across the board. Many millions of NSF funding was left hanging when the Reduction in Force took effect in 1995. There was no one left to carry out the studies across all Federal agencies. The saddest moment in my career.
The Taliban, Ransom.
Yes, amazing the concerted, organized, determined agents of -- what? -- pure and driven hatred against science, humanities, nature?
I hate to sound academic, particularly in view of your personal brush with the monsters, but the Powell memo planned all this back in August, 1971. It set out to gut higher ed, to replace K-12 with mechanized, computer-gradable orgies of standardized testing, to turn state legislatures over to ALEC-cloned Republican vigilantes, and also turn the former Supreme Court over to the billionaire predators.
At least, Ransom, you had some good years with some good people before the living dead arrived with their sickles.
No worries from me, I am an academic. I spent a career teaching math at El Camino. College in Torrance Ca.
I watched as the caliber of input declined over the years. When I retired in 2019 they had dispensed with all of our remedial courses in the name of "not hurting the students feelings". I watched as they watered down the curriculum and brought in computers.
The math hasn't changed but what they expect from the students is far less. Nothing but pushing buttons. No thinking of the deeper concepts.
The old Methuselah's that taught me used chalk, period. It was a big day when they had colored chalk. They'd draw some wiggles on the board and look at us and say "Now visualize it moving this way."
Now i've got Mathematica on my computer. Real time rotations and animations of surfaces in 3D plotted for you.
I learned to see the behavior from the equations. It's fun to be able to see them in color and manipulate them.
I worry that today's students are missing out on visualization and imagination skills. The computer does it for them.
Time will tell what their lack of such skills will be. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. My favorite math book was written by Hardy, in 1906. I still take it around with me. He was such a great author. I've got a reprints of ten years of the Math Tripos exams 1910-1920. Three day exams covering everything.
I'm pleased to say that I have solved many of these old problems, at least one from each year. I still play around with them.
Oh to be in the room with Hardy and Littlewood , Russell and Ramanujan. What minds. No computers just hardcore analysis.
Pithy, eloquent you are, Bob, on the reduction of imagination in "higher" ed today.
Equally on-target you are for the pre-Powell memo days when great figures loomed large.
One of the keys the billionaires used to number, commodify, package all life, was when the ALEC part of post-Powell memo got all the Republican legislatures and many Dem ones, too, to reduce public aid to higher ed. First casualty, tenure. Easier just to hire tens of thousands of "contingent" labor -- no benefits, cheap pay, no longevity.
Second casualty, student debt, as the vulture banks swept in.
Third, all the neutering as cowardice ruled the getting of the few tenure slots remaining.
Add in the zombie HR which took over. The trigger warnings necessary to avoid offending any darlings. And the group-think in retreat by all to group identity safety silos.
The billionaires won who funded Heritage, Hoover, ALEC, the Federalist Society, Claremont, and all the rest of the far-right bequeathing us Citizens United, social media hate algorithms, MAGA, and the Clarence court.
Agents of GREED, my friend. The ruling principle of our times.
Especially ironic that many of these greed-mongers pretend to be Christians; their Jesus would smite them all and turn over their money-lending tables.
My sentiments exactly
Let us hope that "those Newts" go extinct.
If only there was a spell to turn him into a responsible person.
The Newt? Not possible.
Probably : (
BRAVO!
Let's fight back. Want some inspiration? Check out Rivera Sun's Dandelion Insurrection, a three-part piece of speculative fiction that is easy to read and hard to forget.
Also inspirational (frightening?) is Peter Brannon's The Ends of the World about previous mass extinctions. The world had taken this route before, although it has been set off by meteors and volcanos rather than creatures inhabiting it. "The good thing about science, is that it is true whether you believe it or not." Tyson
Thank you, Susan. Will order from here in Japan.
Seems interesting for its non-violent means, and for what appears to be good awareness of others in history who have effected needed change.
Today, I just received Max Wyman's "The Compassionate Imagination: How the arts are central to a functioning democracy." Another reader on Heather's site recommended it. Sometimes it takes awhile to receive, but so good to delve into such things. And better if there's apt way to apply to things Heather or her many good, thoughtful commenters may say.
Hi Phil,
Thank you and thank you for the Max Wyman recommendation. I will order it when I get home. Fascists lack imagination, among other things, and democracy thrives on it.
"Fascists lack imagination, among other things, and democracy thrives on it."
What a great line, Susan! May I steal it? :-)
I've not read it myself yet, Susan.
My online scouting shows the author (a Canadian) may be a bit more polite than I'd like regarding what our billionaire predators have done to our humanities. Will find out.
Love what you say of imagination -- who thrives on it, who lacks it.
By the way, since last exchange, have found copy here in Japan ("Dandelion Insurrection"). Arrives in three days. I'll keep your commenting tab and let you know if I can aptly apply any of the Rivera Sun to any of Heather's.
A couple of the other things are curiosity and humor. Their brand of curiosity is in the service of greed and their humor is sarcasm.
Oh, and yes, I know all about the Powell Memo.
The Neo-Feudal Empire struck back.
The Austin Lounge Lizards go into that pustule upon our history in sharp detail.
I was one of about twenty "environment, science, and technology" focused foreign service officers (State Department diplomats) who dedicated years of training to work bilaterally and multilateral in support of protecting the global environment and enhancing scientific cooperation. When Clinton came to the White House, his people ironically decided that such a dedicated coterie was not needed. For most of us, that pretty much ended our careers. It was a sad day indeed, Ransom!
Clinton was a Wall Street Corporatist. He supported and helped pass more Republican legislation than any Repuplican could ever have done, with a Dem majority Congress. If we manage to keep the POTUS and the Senate, and regain the House, those careeres will become important again. We must contribute $$ to effective organizations that back the candidates that have the realistic chances, as well as the GOTV youth organizations. It's now or never.
There are still hungry minds out there eager to learn. Excited to try things without their calculators and computers.
First you learn how to do something by hand, then you get to use the high tech tools.
The difficulty is time. we've added to the curriculum by teaching a computer component to calculus at the detriment of reasoning skills.
Cantor didn't need a calculator nor Riemann or Lebesgue.
Nothing in the first two years of calculus needs a computer.
Ransom, I suspect that contributing money is a less potent force than how we spend our money and what we refuse to spend our money on while persuading those we can to spend their money "earth-wisely" and most important, to NOT spend our money in earth-destructive ways.
There are heartbreaking consequences when science gets tossed ЁЯШгтАж..
If Biden had not won, it would have happened again. Vashon? I ran the little ship that did the sub-bottom imags of all the landlides (still hazardous) on the long Southeast side of Vashon Is. as well as all of Puget sound. You on that beautiful island?
My uncle ran the cal lab at Keyport in the early 80's and I worked as a calibrater there after the Marines and before grad school at UCSB.. Sort of a full circle moment for me.
My dad was involved in designing the first 3D range in Dabob late '50's early 60's. He worked at APL out of UW. Sometimes I would get to go with him. I used to fish off the pier there as a kid. In those days they had to keep an electronic tech onsite for the vacuum tube computer.
Had to correct for the drift of the tube as they warmed up. Used the heat from the computer to heat the building.
Co-generation.
Shucks it was cold and rainy outside.. We just liked to get warm.
Yes, we have been here going on 37 years! Just now I am looking at the diminishing snowpack on the Olympics. I think they are using LiDAR scanning tech to map the contours of Colvos passage (maybe all of Puget Sound?). What agency was in charge of the imaging? So interesting that you were part of that!
I have close relatives on Vashon and remember it fondly.
ThatтАЩs great that you have Vashon connections! Over the years we have experienced an eerily high number of coincidental connections to VashonЁЯШЖ!
I need to get back there soonтАж my last visit was in 2017, I think.
AKA recognition of reality.
The work continues despite the Taliban because fundamentalists lack the imagination and creativity to do anything other than STOP or destroy. That is a negative force. Something deep inside all of us requires imagination and inquiry. I believe that to be as hardwired in us as negativity and mass destruction. And I believe that energy is growing. Just look no further than the moss that grows on cyclotrons after rain.
Newt, Tom Delay and that crew of self-righteous vipers really did a number on so much that was worthwhile. The Taliban is a good name for them, a precursor to our Russian mafia in Congress.
I'm with you Ransom. I've seen the vanishing of the glaciers on Mt Rainier since I was a kid. It's sobering.
I was at UCSB studying in the math department '83-'90. Knew a couple Geo grad students. Were you in Isla Vista in those halcyon days?
My uncle, Charles Woelke was head of the Shellfish lab in Quilcene Wa. He brought oysters from Japan after the war and seeded the bay. Grew up eating all the oysters we could handle. They're all gone now. But as a kid we used to get the water boiling before going out to pull the shrimp and crab pots. That's fresh seafood.
He told me in the '70's that the salmon run was going away. Sad.
Memories of that fresh seafoodтАжAs kids in Rhode Island in the 60тАЩs ,we would walk down to a deserted beach ,search for the squirt holes and dig up steamer clams to throw in the pot.
Here in Florida weтАЩre using oysters with,as you probably know, their amazing filtration rate of 50/gallons/day to clean up our man-made mess in the lagoon.
Thanks for the memory, and Happy Earth Day!ЁЯМО
Growing up in South Florida after WWII, the waters around were still clear, the fish and crawfish (Florida lobster) were bountiful, and life was good. As kids are wont to do, I thought it would last forever, Paradise.
One of the family stories IтАЩm most proud of is of him and my grandfather going across the island to get some crawfish (Florida lobster) for supper. Dad said they were stacked like cordwood under the rock ledges, and he began to stuff his croker sack with them. Grandfather told him to put them back, saying, тАЬWe only take what we need for today, son.тАЭ
Thank you for your service to the health of Mother Earth and all her children! ЁЯСПЁЯСПЁЯСПтЭдя╕ПЁЯМОЁЯМНЁЯМП
Isn't it somehow wonderful to honor someone whose service was for the life of all life on this amazing planet? Thank you.
Yes, it is! We are so used to thanking military service men and women (rightfully so), I realize now that we should extend an equal measure of thanks to those protecting the Earth.
Thank you for your good work, Alan.
Hear, here!
Thank you for service.
Bless you Alan ЁЯЩП and thank you
Let me join the chorus of those thanking you for your service.
Proud to know you here; thank you, Alan.
Thank you, Mr. Allen!
Thank you, Sir.
Thanks for helping the bay heal.
Thank you Alan!
Thank you to Alan and Heather for this wonderful focus on Earth Day and bringing us up to date on what the Biden Administration is doing in this area.
So amazing! Thank you for your important work!
Thank you sir. I agree that our entire World is an alarm clock that started ringing more than 60 years ago.
Thank you for your service....to our planet.