Washington Post | The Casual Blog

January 7, 2023

Big white birds, intelligent bees, Ultra, and the tree lady

Last week I drove to eastern North Carolina to check on the visiting wild birds. Some hundreds of tundra swans were there. These big white birds nest on the Arctic tundra and migrate long distances to winter at places like Pungo Lake. They really are majestic, swimming calmly or climbing the air. I watched them for quite a while, flying, landing, feeding, preening, and having minor disputes.

Shortly after sunrise I also saw thousands of snow geese in a riotous murmuration, circling around a farm field, landing, then taking off again. It was thrilling. What were they up to? They vocalize as they fly, and perhaps they’re debating how to group themselves and where to go for the day. Or perhaps that’s just their ritual, their way to greet the sunrise.

We have a lot to learn about the minds of other animals. A new book I’m reading, The Mind of a Bee, by Lars Chittka, shows that most of what I was taught about bees back in the day was ridiculously wrong. Chittka, a professor, discusses the special qualities of bee perception, communication, and behavior. He makes a convincing case that individual bees have memories and solve complex problems of navigation, flower biology, and structural engineering. It’s hard not to conclude that they have a kind of intelligence.

On the drive out east, I listened to Rachel Maddow’s new podcast, Ultra. The subject is American Nazis in WWII, including a couple of dozen members of Congress who collaborated with Hitler’s government. One group, inspired by the rabidly antisemitic Father Coughlin (the most popular radio personality of his time), stockpiled arms and planned to overthrow the U.S. government.

I enjoy learning about American history, and like to think my knowledge is above average. But the Ultra story was a chapter I’d never heard anything about. I’d had the impression that in WWII, there was hardly any disagreement among Americans on the proposition that Nazism was wrong and needed to be opposed with all our strength. But thanks to Rachel and her team, I now get that it wasn’t that simple.

The January 6 insurrection, election denialism, QAnon conspiracy thinking, and the MAGA penchant for violence and repression now make more sense. As disturbing as these ideas are, it’s clear that they aren’t random or isolated.

Fascist fears and longings have been part of our story for a long time. For some, there’s real appeal in the idea of finding unity behind an inspired dictator to beat down a supposedly grave threat. It’s easy to condemn this kind of extremism. But it’s better to understand it as part of a long-standing culture that adherents did not consciously choose. It might make us less judgmental and angry, and able to help the extremists calm down and perhaps find a measure of sanity and peace.

On a happier note, I was glad to see the Washington Post featured a good piece by Sarah Kaplan on Suzanne Simard. Simard is a pioneering plant biologist who made key discoveries relating to how trees in forests behave. (She was the model for a character in Richard Powers’ excellent 2018 eco-novel, The Overstory.) She discovered that mycorrhizal fungi connected to tree roots facilitate living forest communities.

Kaplan wrote, “Through decades of study, Simard and other ecologists have revealed how fungi and trees are linked in vast, subterranean networks through which organisms send messages and swap resources. The findings have helped revolutionize the way the world sees forests, turning static stands of trees into complex societies of interdependent species, where scenes of both fierce competition and startling cooperation play out on a grand scale.”

Simard’s current big experiment is called the Mother Tree Project. She’s designed different environments to see how trees and their associated fungi networks fare. It seems pretty clear that the logging methods generally used today are not sustainable, and she’s looking for a better way.

November 22, 2022

Polar creatures and some of their problems

When I got home from Antarctica, I felt like I’d aged about 30 years. I was very tired and weak for more than a week. But I’m happy to say, I’m feeling back to normal, and maybe even better. In fact, I’m starting to think about another trip there to see these beautiful creatures and their unique habitat. Anyhow, I wanted to share a few more pictures I made of penguins, an elephant seal, fur seals, and a leopard seal. I was trying to capture aspects of their personalities, customs, and environments.

As you may know, but many people don’t, Antarctica is in big trouble from climate change. Higher temperatures there are changing the habitats of the animals that live on and around the continent, and the collapse of giant ice shelves and melting glaciers are lifting sea levels. The situation is dire, and has global implications.

But I’ve really been trying to stay positive, and given so many sources of fear and anxiety, would like to avoid making your and my fear and anxiety still worse. Getting depressed is not going to help. But it’s tough to keep learning more about what is happening to our planet and not be tempted to throw in the towel.

And so I almost skipped a couple of podcasts on climate change last week that I’m glad I didn’t. I recommend both as antidotes for hopelessness put out by respected and trustworthy journalists.

David Wallace-Wells wrote what may well be the most detailed and gory account of what’s in store if we don’t change course in burning fossil fuels, The Uninhabitable Earth, in 2017, But in an interview on Fresh Air last week, he explained that technology and market forces have made the worst-case scenarios he described back then much less likely. We still stand a chance of putting in place the green energy infrastructures that would greatly mitigate disaster. He made these same points in a recent NY Times magazine piece.

Likewise, Bill McKibben has been a path-breaking writer on climate change, authoring among other things The End of Nature. (Long ago, I worked with McKibben when he was a young reporter and I was a fact checker at the New Yorker.) In an interview with Ezra Klein, McKibben said the long history of humans surviving by burning things will, one way or another, come to a conclusion, and it may be not be as terrible as we were recently expecting.

McKibben explained that the lower cost of solar panels and storage technologies is changing the energy equation, as the persistence of climate activists has finally gotten through to more people. The cost of renewables has fallen hugely, and is now lower than fossil fuels. Now it doesn’t make economic sense not to switch to green technology. L

Unfortunately, the fossil fuel companies aren’t admitting this and they’re not giving up, so there’s still a lot of work to be done. McKibben continues to encourage activism, including in a new initiative called Third Act especially for those over 60. He thinks we should continue to press for fossil fuel divestment by their biggest bankers, which unfortunately, are all banks I do or have done business with: Bank of America, Citi, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. He also articulated these points in a New Yorker piece

Before my Antarctic journey, I started rereading Bleak House, the epic novel by Charles Dickens. The hard back edition I had was a brick, at more than a thousand pages. To save weight while traveling, I tried switching to a free e-book version. This edition was full of bizarre errors, which I assume arose from relying on non-human editorial bots.

Anyhow, I resumed making my way through my paper copy when I got home. This year I’ve discovered, or rediscovered, that rereading can be extremely rewarding. In many cases, I took on heavy duty literature when I was young that I was ill-equipped to understand. The ordinary experiences of growing up — learning things, making a living, having friends and family, and everything else were transformative for me (as they are for everyone). I’m now 67 (almost the age when my father died), and a different person in many ways than I was at 15, or 25, or 35. Or 55, for that matter.

Certainly I’m much better equipped for the adventure of reading a masterpiece like Bleak House. On this, my fourth reading, I got much more from it, even as I better understood some of its shortcomings. I easily grasped Dickens’s great love for humanity, his humor, and his anger at injustice.

Now, after having had a career in the American legal system and experience with the British, French, Indian, Argentinian, and other legal systems, I can better appreciate Dickens’s bitter critique of the English courts of equity of his time. I now know a lot more about the history of colonialism and imperialism, and have a better frame of reference for the military and commercial struggles that happen offstage in his story.

Dickens was knowledgeable and critical of the ravages of early capitalism and industrialization, including extreme inequalities of wealth. He had a wonderful flair for sniffing out and satirizing hypocrisy and moral posing, including poorly thought out philanthropy.

Yet he was oblivious to problems with various other hierarchies, like race, gender, and species. The book has some of his most gorgeous writing, and also passages that feel like they were recycled on a tight deadline. Some of his characters are memorable and touching (I still adore Esther Summerson) or comic (Old Turveydrop), though others, like John Jarndyce, are more generous than any known human.

Apropos of climate change, Bleak House is also about what industrialization means for the environment, such as horrific and deadly pollution. His description of London fog and iron factory emissions are fascinating and disturbing. He also can be brutally honest in describing the struggles of enslaved animals, such as horses who fall while trying to pull a coach through the snow and mud.

Apropos of non-human animals and efforts to better understand their lives, I wanted to pass along a link to a thought-provoking story about pigs, which humans generally greatly underestimate and devalue as a species. Research reported by Leo Sands in the Washington Post indicated that pigs’ social lives have surprising dimensions. For example, when two pigs have a serious fight, a third pig will sometimes help resolve the dispute by nuzzling or similar touching. That is, some pigs are concerned about the unhappiness of other pigs, and know how to calm anger and increase happiness. Of course, humans also sometimes try to defuse tensions and resolve disputes, though we could do a lot better. Perhaps the pigs’ nuzzling approach would help.

December 14, 2014

Rectal feeding???

This week I was quite shaken by the new Senate report on the CIA’s program of “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on those suspected of Jihadist terrorist intentions. I had, of course, already heard there’d been some very rough stuff, like water boarding. But I hadn’t known (and may still not, since much information is still secret) the full extent of the barbarity and depravity.

For example, the concept of “rectal feeding” was new to me. I suspected based on high school biology that it was not possible to feed humans through the southern side, and I checked – this is correct. Folks, we’re talking about our government, which is to say, humans purporting to act on your and my behalf, anally raping prisoners. It’s hard to see how we can just let this pass.

I also hadn’t known that the foundation of the program included systematic and pervasive lies not just to the public but also to Congress and the Executive. It was certainly news to me that the architects of the program were amateurs with no prior experience in intelligence. And I hadn’t previously known for certain that the program was not remotely justified by intelligence gathering achievements.

Some may say I’m just sentimental about human dignity and the concept of the rule of law, and these are notions we can’t afford when we’re in an existential battle with evil. Perhaps. But the evidence from the Senate report is that the successes of the CIA interrogators actually came from conventional, non-“enhanced” methods. The enhanced techniques produced misery, madness, and death, but did not defuse any ticking time bombs. It may be that those who directed this program were the ones who were in a dream world, imagining both an existential threat from terrorism and a simple solution to that threat.

It’s fascinating, and disturbing, to see present and former CIA and Bush administration officials stepping up to praise and defend the program. It’s no surprise that they would defend their work, and perhaps they are in some sense sincere. They’ve probably got cognative dissonance, and are managing it as best they can. They could also have more practical and selfish motives, like heading off any discussion of whether they should be tried for war crimes.

In any event, the fact that these officials are still willing to defend the CIA torture program underlines the importance of our holding accountable those who directed and participated in this abomination. We cannot leave ambiguous the question of whether it is acceptable to torture prisoners. No future official should be in doubt that this is criminal behavior, for which they are subject to imprisonment.

Of course, though I hate to say, they’ll probably get away with it. There’s no special interest that will provide campaign dollars in exchange for standing up for human rights of prisoners. There are a few, but too few, of our representatives prepared to spend political capital on an issue that none of us enjoy thinking about.

And the knowledge, thanks to Edward Snowden, that our electronic communications may well be being screened by the NSA for signs of dissent will make some of us who feel outrage and shame hesitate to speak up and demand justice and accountability. These are, after all, the people who so far have the unchecked power to make us disappear into “black sites” and rectally feed us. I don’t mean to exaggerate. Plainly, I don’t think this is an immediate threat, since I’ve just made a critical public statement about it. But I must admit, I hesitated. I’m so sorry this has happened to our country.

I’d like to call out The Washington Post for its extensive and clear-eyed coverage of this dark and shameful chapter. Here is a particularly helpful quick guide to the Senate report from the Post.