NPR – Page 3 – The View from a Drawbridge

Moving Ten Meters South

Recently I listened to a speech by Noam Chomsky on my local NPR station, and one of the many things he said that struck me was that given the unprecedented rise in temperatures on this planet, it’s as if we all are moving 10 meters south every single day. Okay, that kind of freaked me out.

First of all, I hate moving. The thought of having to do it every day leaves me cold (or in this case, hot, I suppose). Second, it took me 40 years to get out of the South, and now I’m being dragged slowly back to it? No! Not fair!

Just out of curiosity, I decided to do the math. First, I had to find the latitude of Seattle, Washington, which is 47.6097N. Then I had to find the latitude of Jacksonville, Florida, my old stomping grounds. That turns out to be 30.3369 N.

Now, we’re going to pretend that Jacksonville is directly south of Seattle instead of being on the opposite side of the continent or this is going to get waaaaaaay beyond my math skills and patience.

Next, I had to figure out what that converts to in (due south) miles. This gets complicated, because the earth is all curvy and stuff. (And all you flat earth folks, don’t flame me. I’m not interested.) So I went to the NOAA Latitude/Longitude Distance calculator, and pretending that both cities were at a longitude of 122.3331 W, I discovered that that’s a distance of 1,193 miles.

But good old Noam, being the science-oriented guy that he is, gave us our southward drift in meters. So I also had to convert to metric. Sigh. That means it will stop being mentally imaginable to me, but here you go: 1,193 miles is 1,919 kilometers, or 1,919,000 meters.

So, if I’m drifting 10 meters south every day, that means it will take me 191,900 days to get back to Jacksonville’s latitude. That’s more than 525 years. (And if you mention that I forgot to allow for the extra day every leap year, I’ll slap you silly. This is a thought experiment, people!)

Whew! I can actually live with that. Mainly because I won’t be alive. And besides, I’d in fact land in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Baja California. And that may as well be Jacksonville at that point, because Jacksonville will be completely submerged, as will most of the rest of Florida. Lucky for me, the vast majority of Seattle will remain high and dry. That is, if the next major earthquake hasn’t dumped it into the sea.

But even though I wouldn’t be literally drifting southward into the ocean, and supposing Seattle hasn’t been earthquaked into oblivion, it will be hot, and the climate will be so drastically altered that the city will look nothing like its current lush, green, beflowered, beautiful self. But still, my toes won’t be getting all pruny.

Of course, there’d be the refugees from other flooded states and nations desperately trying to find places to live and totally invading my space along with a population that had already exploded beyond comprehension, and they’d be using up all the drinking water and fighting over what few fresh vegetables were left… Shades of Soylent Green or Waterworld.

I don’t know about you, but this thought experiment has stopped being fun. But if you’re a glutton for punishment and really want an eye opening experience, go to the Surging Seas website and type in various coastal cities. It will tell you what’s going to happen if we don’t get our act together and drastically cut carbon emissions.

We need to stop bringing snowballs to Capitol Hill and start taking action. Otherwise future generations will curse our names, and laugh bitterly at our stupidity. All this while figuratively drifting ever southward.

b277c442ac0e048169028788e49fc8729feafd54 — Bye bye Florida. Image credit: National Geographic

Oh, My Aching Back

I’m not getting any younger. My back can attest to that. I wake up several times a night because the pain in my lower back makes me feel the need to shift positions. I can’t remember the last time this was not the case. It makes for a very tiring experience.

Many months ago I heard this story on NPR about a woman named Esther Gokhale who studied indigenous cultures that exhibited very little back pain, and she posits the theory that their spines are J shaped, rather than S shaped like the average American’s. There could be several reasons for this. They don’t spend hours hunched over a computer. They aren’t overweight. They exercise more, which means they have stronger abdominal muscles, which better support the spine. Whatever it is, I’ll take some of that, and come back for seconds.

When I learned about this, I instantly heard my mother’s voice in my head saying, “Sit up straight!” Mom always knew best. But maybe not. According to Gokhale, this just positions you for a world of hurt. Instead, you should roll your shoulders up and back to open up the chest, and take a deep breath to stretch and lengthen the spine.

If you read the NPR story you’ll see 5 ways to make your spine more J shaped. Even taking these steps for a few seconds made me feel better. And after practicing these steps for just a few days, I’m already experiencing significant change. My favorite step is squeezing your gluteus medius muscle every time you take a step. It helps your back while giving you the butt you had when you were 19. Oh, yeah. I’m DEFINITELY going to do this! (Of course, I’m not a doctor, so you might want to consult with yours before doing anything.)

I suspect that maintaining this more regal posture will do things for my self-confidence as well. That will be fodder for a future blog entry. Until then, three cheers for better back health!

s spine vs j spine — S vs J shaped spine, via npr.org.

Bone Records

I heard an amazing story on NPR’s All Things Considered the other day. Apparently in the 1950’s in Russia, censorship was so fully in effect that you couldn’t get Western rock n’ roll music. Even being in possession of such music could send you to prison.

Censorship in all its forms tends to backfire. When you tell people they cannot have something, it makes them want that thing very, very badly. (Just ask anyone who ever bought a Cuban cigar in the US.)

The Russians were very innovative in coming up with a way around this censorship. They learned how to etch music onto used x-ray film. These bootleg records were therefore called “Bone Records” and were sold in back alleys in the dead of night. They can still occasionally be found in flea markets and garage sales.

The quality of the music on these x-rays was not high. It kind of sounds scratchy, and like it’s coming from the inside of a tin can. But such was their thirst for music that they were willing to put up with this and even risk their freedom for it. That really impresses me. That tells you all you need to know about the human craving for art in all its forms.

A guy named Stephen Coates has written a book on the subject called X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone. This is definitely on my “to read” list. The NPR story was an interview with Mr. Coates. Listen to the story, read the book, and tell me what you think.

At the very least, take a minute to appreciate your ready access to music as the luxury that it is.

bone records — [Image credit: boston.com]

Rete Mirabile

I love learning something new! On my drive in to work today, I was listening to National Public Radio, as is my custom, and I got to hear Bird Note, a 2 minute podcast that is a weekly staple of some NPR stations. I always look forward to their segments because I learn so much about birds that I never knew before.

This week’s topic was rete mirabile, or “wonderful net”, an adaptation that I didn’t know existed before this moment. It’s a net of arteries and veins that are close together and provide a temperature exchange, in this case between the warm blood coming from a bird’s heart and the cold blood coming from its feet. This is why birds’ feet don’t freeze. Their temperature tends to stay pretty close to the ambient temperature, and therefore they remain quite comfortable. This is why you will never see a bird wearing a pair of Uggs.

If your NPR station doesn’t carry Bird Note, I strongly encourage you to talk them into it. In the meantime, you can listen to their podcasts here.

Now I’m going to spend a few minutes picturing birds in Uggs, and wondering why I never wondered why birds’ feet don’t freeze. I sure wish I had this adaptation for my feet! They pretty much feel like two blocks of ice from now until May.

Stay warm!

nofl_rete_mirable_490

The Thirty Million Words Initiative

If I haven’t said it recently (but I’m fairly sure I have), I absolutely love National Public Radio. I learn so much from NPR that I probably would never know otherwise. Case in point: the Thirty Million Words Initiative.

One of my all time pet peeves is parents who do not read to or communicate with their children. I’ve entered many a house where there are no books to be found, and the TV is tuned to soap operas instead of Sesame Street, and it makes me want to scream, “You are setting your child up for failure!”

Now, finally, vindication. The Thirty Million Words Initiative was started by Dana Suskind, a surgeon who wrote the book Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain. In an interview with NPR, Suskind said, “The 30 million word gap comes from a very famous study that was done probably about 30 years ago by Betty Hart and Todd Risley, where they followed a group of children between 0 and 3 years old from all socioeconomic backgrounds. And basically what they found, by the end of age 3, children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds will have heard 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers. And this number itself was correlated not just with differences in vocabulary but also differences in IQ and test scores in the third grade.”

This gap comes from a combination of familial/cultural differences and the stressors of poverty. The words you use with your child have an impact as well. Some children hear as much as 6 times as many positive affirmations as other children do. Being belittled affects your development.

The Thirty Million Words Initiative is a program that encourages parents to tune in, talk more, and take turns with their children. To learn more about this, read the book, visit the website and support it. Set your child up for success.

Vowels, Consonants, Climate

I just love National Public Radio! It constantly causes me to look at the world through a whole new lens. This story, in particular, almost made me late for work because I refused to get out of my car until I’d heard the whole thing. Language lover that I am, now I’m even more focused on the sounds that we humans produce because of what I’ve learned from this report.

It seems that recently many linguists have developed a theory that the languages that have evolved over time are influenced by the climate in which one lives. It seems that the sounds of consonants are much easier to hear in open, arid, and temperate terrain. On the other hand, those consonants become muffled in humid areas with a lot of dense vegetation.

What they seem to be finding is that the more tropical the climate, the more vowel-heavy the language tends to be. Granted, this is a highly simplistic conclusion, and requires much more study. Obviously there are many factors that influence language over the centuries. But it’s still a very fascinating proposition.

They’ve noted that this theory works with birdsong as well. Many tropical birds have more vowel-rich songs, because succeeding generations imitate what they’re able to hear, and if the consonants get muffled, they leave them off.

I look forward to hearing more about this as they study it in more depth. In the meantime, I will just luxuriate in the waters of this brand new perspective. Care to join me?

When it's this freakin' humid, even the consonants can't be bothered to move. — When it’s this freakin’ humid, even the consonants can’t be bothered to move.

The Majority Minority

The other day I was listening to an interview on National Public Radio. The woman who was speaking was a refugee from Yemen who had to flee that country under a hail of bullets, and had lost everything she ever had. She was discussing how hard it had been to get out of the country, and how no one, and I mean no one, wanted to help her.

I sat there for a long time after the interview, trying to imagine what it must be like to be surrounded by people who won’t let you leave a war zone and only want you dead. I tried to picture myself in a situation where everything I had worked for my entire life was taken from me, and there was no positive future on the horizon.

My reality is one in which I’m relatively secure. I don’t fear waking up with a gun pointed at my face. It’s a safe bet that the vast majority of the people that I love will not die violent deaths. And while I’ve had to struggle to get where I am, and have, indeed, suffered more than one setback in my life, I’m fairly certain that an RPG isn’t going to detonate in my living room. I won’t even be racially profiled by my local police force.

I can’t imagine how it must change you to live a reality other than mine. What do you become? How do you see the world? How do you survive? I haven’t done anything to deserve the luxury that I enjoy. And safety is a luxury. I just happened to be born the right color in the right place at the right time.

I am considered part of the majority. But as more of the world is war-torn and suffers from senseless tragedies, I have to wonder if my “norm” isn’t really in the minority, and if, perhaps, the darkness is not advancing. The sad thing is I have no idea what to do about it. But the very, very least I can do is appreciate my good fortune.

Marriage Contracts

I was listening to Weekend Edition on NPR the other day, and they were discussing the fact that in Israel, a woman cannot get divorced without her husband’s permission. Even a secular woman in that country is bound by this ancient Jewish practice. So if you have a vindictive husband with nothing to lose (the very type you’d most want to leave), you could very well be stuck with him for life. That means that even if you don’t live together, his debts and problems will forever be yours. What a nightmare. That’s not marriage. That’s slavery.

I love it when people talk about the sanctity of marriage as if it were some sort of never-changing feature in life’s landscape. The fact is that more marriages end in divorce than live happily ever after. That has been the reality for many, many decades, and it obviously isn’t going to change. With that in mind, isn’t it high time we develop our laws to reflect this irrefutable evidence?

Divorce should be a much simpler, cut and dried procedure that doesn’t cost a fortune and doesn’t require lawyers. As a matter of fact, from a sociological standpoint it would make much more sense if the marriage contract were something that people had to renew every, say, five years. If it wasn’t working out, you simply let the contract expire.

“Oh, but then there would be no stability for the poor innocent children!” Gimme a break. There’s no stability for them now. If people don’t want to be together, they’ll find a way not to be together. Making divorce easier isn’t going to impact that. It will just mean the inevitable will come to pass in a more equitable, rapid, inexpensive and less stress-inducing manner.

Marriage was invented at a time when people weren’t expected to make it to age 40. It was a lovely, romantic construct that added to a stable society, and provided support for women at a time when they couldn’t work outside the home. But let’s face it, you can live with the devil himself for that short amount of time but it’s quite different when you tack on an additional 40 years to that proposition, and women these days can take care of themselves. This delightful tradition no longer suits the reality of the situation.

It’s high time we take the religious fantasy out of our legal system and deal with the practicalities at hand.

[Image credit: buquedeideias.tumblr.com]

Not All NPR Stations Are Created Equal

I am a loyal listener of National Public Radio. It is my main source of news and entertainment. It often inspires topics for this blog. Whenever I travel by car, I look up the NPR station for the area in question so that I can stay connected. It fascinates me how different one NPR station can be from another. (You can find your NPR station here.)

For example, I listen to KPLU here in Seattle, and because of that, I whenever I hear Jazz, I will always think of this city. I actually like Jazz, but KPLU kind of overdoes it. Here’s today’s schedule. Interspersed with Morning Edition and All Things Considered and Fresh Air, we have: Midnight to 4 am: Jazz 24. 9am to 3 pm: Midday Jazz. 7:30 pm to Midnight: Evening Jazz. If I hear “I Loves You Porgy” one more time, as good as it is, I may lose my mind. My kingdom for a little freakin’ variety!

The only NPR station I’ve heard that was even more monotonous was WQCS out of Fort Pierce, Florida. Classical. Once in a while, a little news. But classical, classical, classical. I could only take it in very short doses. The odd thing about this station is it’s broadcast from the local college. They seem to have overlooked that entire potential audience and have chosen instead to target people born in the 1800’s. What a waste.

On the other hand, just up the Florida Coast from WQCS is one of the best NPR stations I’ve ever heard. WFIT in Melbourne, Florida is all about variety! Yes, today they’re doing Jazz from Midnight to 5 am and Morning Edition from 5 to 9 am, but from 9 to 10 they’re doing Democracy Now, and from 10 am to 2 pm it’s Sound Waves. Sound waves is a mix of contemporary music, independent labels and rock classics. You will often hear stuff on Sound Waves that you won’t hear anywhere else. And then 2 pm to 4 pm is World Café, one of my favorites. It’s a mix of blues, rock, world music, folk, and alternative country. It’s nationally syndicated. (I can’t understand why more NPR stations don’t pick it up.) Then, from 4 to 7 pm is All Things Considered, and from 7 to 10 pm is Jazz On The Beach, and from 10 pm to Midnight is Mozart’s Attic. See? A nice variety! How hard is that? Seriously?

Another great NPR station, much to my shock, is KUSU in Salt Lake City. On any given day, they broadcast talk shows like BBC World Service, TED Radio Hour, As It Happens, Human Kind and The Zesty Garden. I have to admit this one is a bit light on the music, but it does bring hyper-conservative Salt Lake a wide variety of views and news that they probably have no other exposure to, so more power to them!

And you won’t hear me say many good things about my old hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, but I have to admit that WJCT is a fantastic station. Decades ago they were a dry, boring, classical station, but under new management they have blossomed. Not only do they carry the regular news programs, including a local one, but the music… Oh! The music in the evenings! I used to adore Electro Lounge, which was a laid-back mixed bag of delightful surprises. I also looked forward to String Theory every week, with its modern acoustic alternative vibe. Shows like Indie Endeavor, Doo Wop Revival, Country Crossroads, Blues Horizon, Lost in the Stacks, Route 66, and This Is Jazz virtually guaranteed that on this station you could never be bored. I am stunned that they don’t try to nationally syndicate these shows. They could support their station that way.

And speaking of support, if you have the means, please support your NPR station. We must keep quality news and music alive and kicking! The beauty of all these stations is you can listen to them on line from anywhere in the world. And I do, believe me. Man cannot live on Jazz alone.

[Image credit: stellarfour.com]

“Pre-Baffled”

God, I love National Public Radio. I was listening to a guy get interviewed on the way to work this morning. He was talking about a book he had written about understanding the monetary system. I wish I had gotten his name or his book’s name, but I was driving. Anyway, he was saying that many people are intimidated by the whole system, including banking and investments, and that he wasn’t because he had relatives in banking, so he had the courage to learn about it.

And then it happened. He coined a term that I think ought to become a thing. If it doesn’t become a thing, I will lose utter faith in humanity. You have been warned.

The term was “pre-baffled”. He said a lot of people are sort of pre-baffled by the monetary system. They think they’ll never be able to understand it, so they don’t even try.

I LOVE THIS WORD!

The reason it strikes such a chord with me is that I see this phenomenon all the time, and I can’t relate to it at all. The one thing, probably the only thing I’m 100% confident about is my intelligence. I have absolutely no doubt that I’m capable of learning anything at all if I’m willing to put the time and effort into it. Granted, I really don’t feel like investing years of my life delving into brain surgery or rocket science, but if the spirit moved me, I have no doubt I could do it. Apparently I suffer from an utter lack of pre-bafflement.

Unfortunately I see friends and loved ones psyching themselves out all the time. “I hate math. I’m not going to do well in this class.” “Well, I hate math, too, and it doesn’t come as easily to me as writing my blog does, but that only means I have to try that much harder. You are an intelligent person. You can do it.”

Update: A friend of mine tracked down the source of this new term! It was an interview with John Lanchester about his book How to Speak Money. Check out the interview here.

Poor Beaker is the poster child for bafflement, both pre and post.