The week of Darwin's Anniversary

This being the week for Darwin's anniversaries, the 200th of his birth and the 150th of the publication of On the Origin of Species, I thought it appropriate to point out a book that I found interesting, even if it was not published.

Lorna Salzman has, on her web site, an electronic copy of her own book: Politics as if Evolution Mattered. In a day when everything is political, it makes an interesting read.

Rehabilitating Darwin is a large task and one best left to evolutionary biologists in the boxing arena with creationists. Rehabilitating an understanding of evolution as the other side of the ecology coin, however, has practical implications for environmental and social justice activists, who sorely need intellectual rather than ideological weapons to turn back against corporate greenwashers and biased media. Ecological principles underlie ecological relationships, and practically every environmental battle revolves around such relationships, their character, their value and the threats thereto.

Environmentalists who are accused of being merely obstructionists, fearmongers and radicals with hidden agendas can dispel such charges only when they understand and utilize the tools provided them by the scientifically impartial concepts of ecology and evolution. A battle, not to mention a movement, founded on objective reality, on “real life” as it were, is not so easily lost as one founded only on abstract or subjective credos.

Giving it a thought

Last night, I turned on the tele during the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and listened to Gwen Ifill talk to Al Gore about his new book, The Assault on Reason.

I'm deeply concerned that the role of reason, and facts, and logic in the way we make our decisions in America has been diminished significantly, to the point where we could make a decision to invade a country that didn't attack us, at a time when 70 percent of the American people genuinely had the impression and belief that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks of 9/11.

Then, this morning, I was reading the new material at Chris Mooney's intersection and he is dealing with the same thing. The fact that the political control of the "message" is so tight that one can never allow facts to get in the way.

Maybe it has to do with media that is more concerned about ratings than about news. All of the local channels did a whale of a job this past several weeks, devoting a significant amount of time and resources to the story of two lost whales. They even named one Delta. But the real story of the Delta is that of a small fish called the delta smelt. Maybe, Delta the whale may weigh more than all of the remaining delta smelt combined and the pumping of water from the Delta toward SoCal and the farms of the Central Valley has pulled this species close to extinction.

In each case cited, the political leadership has started with the answer and selected the observations that would fit those facts. They have made a science of language to frame problems that (in the case of 9/11 and Iraq) never existed or (in the case of global warming) are too scary in their implication of political failure to allow the public to believe that they just might be true.

I don't have solutions. I have developed a fairly well calibrated BS-Meter and use it frequently. Gore says that he has some remedies, but I don't think that politicians can be the source of change. If any one institution can perform that function, it is the media and they have steadfastly refused to do more than allow the talking heads to use both sides of their mouths.

Maybe one reason for the decline in newspaper circulation is that we all know they are part of the problem.

I am increasingly convinced that we need to have a Truth Think Tank (since being from a think tank is the one way to get media attention). Anyone want to sign on?

Sunshine Week

Today is the last day of Sunshine Week. Fortunately, for us on the West Coast, that hs been a week of great weather. Unfortunately, we are living in an age when there is so much that still needs to be done to allow a little sunshine into the dark recesses of the body politic.

Maybe the best news is that the independent media is still interested in pursuing the the public's right to know and not just because it sells newspaper. There are still a few publishers and editors who actually care about the communities in which they live. The best recent example that I know of is the fight of the Tracy Press to focus our attention on the relationship between the management at Lawrence Livermore Labs and Tracy, CA, councilwoman Suzanne Tucker. This involves the decision to implement a new bio-weapons lab at that site and the fact that they will conduct open air explosions as part of the testing process. The Tracy Press has now filed suit to gain access to Tucker's emails on the subject.


Recently, Dean Singleton's Media News Group, having recently purchased the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times from McClatchy Newspapers, has concentrated ownership of print news in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some, including KTVU-TV reporter Randi Shandobil, think this might be a dangerous monopoly. (link requires Windows Media Player) I fully agree. Even though Mercury News editor Stephen Wright has spoken out strongly about sunshine laws in city government, I do not see the Media News Group papers taking the kind of action that the Tracy Press took this week.

Maybe it is rather for the bloggers to claim leadership in allowing the public to learn what it needs to know, especially when there is muck that needs raking. The case for taking action against Attorney General Gonzales, especially with regard to the firing us 8 US Attorneys, did not come from the mainstream media outlets, though the NY Times and Washington Post have taken up the story. It really began with Josh Marshall and Paul Kiel at Talking Point Memo Cafe and with Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers. The back story of how this rolled out was recently outlined by Eric Alterman at Huffington Post. Of course, Marshall was a professional journalist before starting Talking Points Memo and that has led to some very competent investigative reporting.

We must continue to oppose the increasing concentration of local media. The best way to do this is to support (subscribe to) those local, independent papers like the Tracy Press whose love of their community and for the integrity of the journalistic tradition will continue to shine some sun on the body politic.