The evolutionary history of animal development is producing some thrilling science these days. Like Endless Forms Most Beautiful, by Sean Carroll, Your Inner Fish is written for a general audience by one of the pioneering scientists in the field.
Neil Shubin is a paleontologist and developmental biologist whose team discovered Tiktaalik, a Devonian fish that is evolving toward tetrapod. The stage of tetrapod evolution is intriguing on its own — the creature jointed fins with ends that bend and splay, and a neck, allowing it to do “pushups” in shallow water to catch prey or watch for predators.
Carroll has more in-depth information than Shubin about the core of evo devo, the evolution of the developmental program that builds creatures with bodies. Where Shubin’s book shines is exploring the deep evolutionary history of different parts of the body, such as teeth, eyes, ears, and the head. The developmental program for teeth, out of the interaction between layers of skin in the embryo, also generates hair, feathers, and breasts. The bones, cartilage, and nerves in the human jaw, ears, and throat, expanded from tissues that served as gills in fish; the straightforward nerve routes in fish became convoluted in mammals now that the location of the tissues has been rearranged.
One of the most interesting chapters in the book covered the evolution of the building materials of bodies: collagen, cartilage, bone, intercellular communication. One fascinating hypothesis in this section is that one of the key bodybuilding materials, collagen, requires a lot of oxygen to produce. Therefore, a key factor in the explosion of animals with bodies in the Cambrian era was a rapid rise in the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.
To follow up on this idea, I’m now reading Oxygen, the Molecule that Made the World.
Evolution, meta-evolution, and persuasion
In general, I strongly prefer reading about the science of evolution, rather than arguments defending evolution against its detractors. The beautiful, rich stories of the evolution of life, supported by interlocking evidence in fossils, rocks, and dna are more interesting than the meta-argument. I don’t run into too many creationists in my usual social circles.
Every once in a while, I bump into some creationism. During the long wait for a car repair the other day, I was reading the fascinating story of Oxygen, in which the rocks, air and climate of the earth have been intertwingled with the evolution of life. On the drive back, flipping the tuner in search of a news station I stumbled upon a “creation science” radio show.
The theory of the creationists on the show depended on an assumption of rapidly varying rates of radioactive decay. They couldn’t explain why decay rates would fluctuate, except that God is all-wise and all-powerful. Moreover, they explained, all of the rock layers on earth, which conventional science attributes to billions of years of geologic story, were actually caused by intense volcanic activity and sedimentary deposition during the Flood 5000 years ago. How did Noah survive on the ark, with all the earth’s volcanic and sedimentary rock erupting and flowing around him? Miracles, of course. God is all-powerful.
Science is somewhat harder but much more interesting when you can’t use miracles to patch up the gaps in your logic.
This does raise interesting questions about information and persuasion. Americans’ beliefs tend to divert from orthodox religion when their personal experience diverges from religious teaching. A majority of young people support gay rights, and in general, people are more likely to support gay rights when they know family members, friends or colleagues who are gay. Their emotional experience overrides religious arguments.
Similarly, according to a a new Pew study, a (narrow) majority of American Christians believe that non-Christian religions can also lead to salvation. When people encounter good people with varying religious beliefs, they conclude that it isn’t plausible that only fellow Christians will go to heaven.
Americans come to support gay right and religious pluralism, based on their personal life experiences. So what of evolution? A person isn’t going to meet an australopithecus on the way to the store, or have a feathered dinosaur as a pet. The beautiful and compelling ideas of evolutionary development depend on basic understanding of genetics and developmentary biology. The case for evolution is made of fact and reason, not personal everyday experience.
There is a disturbing sub-plot running between the lines in Oxygen. Much of the innovative geology and paleontology was done in pre-WWII Germany. Science, of course, came to a halt, when society was taken over by a political movement with demented beliefs. What sort of society can educate its citizens so that a majority supports science?
Food culture: The Story of Sushi, United States of Arugula
Trevor Corson, the author of The Story of Sushi, is a sushi concierge. For an undisclosed fee, he will impart the secrets of sushi to a private party or corporate group.
Corson knows and loves sushi, and loves to teach about it and that shapes his book. Casual sushi fans will learn surprising facts: sushi evolved from a dish of preserved, fermented fish. The “traditional sushi bar” arise from the post-WWII reconstruction period, when the American occupiers banned outdoor stands as a health hazard. The little cultural habits of American sushi eating aren’t authentic. Japanese eaters of sushi don’t mix wasabi and soy sauce; they dip the fish side of the sushi; and they use fingers not chopsticks. Readers will learn about the biology of fish and fermentation, subtle techniques of shaping rice and slicing fish.
With a cultural historian’s eye toward the evolution of sushi, and an educated palate, Corson is cheerful about many adaptations of sushi in American culture: the field is more open to newcomers, including women and people of various ethnicities. California rolls and western-style sushi bars have become popular in Japan. His dislikes – sweet, fried adaptations of sushi – are esthetic but not purist. He is sympathetic to working class people who see sushi as a source of jobs, celebrities drawn to fashionable tasty food; learned and creative scholars and artisans. He’s an esthete but not a snob.
David Kamp, the author of The United States of Arugula, enjoys food. He’s a second generation upper middle class foodie, the child of parents who went through phases of Julia Child, Moosewood, and “do everything the New York Times weekend section tells you to do.” Most of all, he loves chronicling the mores and foibles of upper middle class trendsetters. The United States of Arugula is at least as much about the rise of food publicity and celebrity as it is about food.
The book chronicles the rise of promoters of American food culture, from the francophile tastesetters Child, Beard and Claiborne, to California’s post-hippie promoters of fresh local food at Chez Panisse and Niman Ranch, to the celebrity chefs of the day before yesterday, with shows on the food channel and franchise extensions in Vegas.
Readers will learn the origins of numerous food trends that have flitted into fashion; baby lettuces, pizza with artichoke hearts, sundried tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. An underlying theme of the book is food as fashion; an individual or group discovers or invents a style; popularizes it, and creates a career. Another theme is foodiehood as social climbing. The aspiring upper middle class uses culture as a badge of membership in the club, and chases the latest trends in cooking and restaurants to compete for social status.
Kamp has some self-awareness about food-snobbery — he’s a co-author of The Food Snob’s Dictionary. But it’s self-awareness of the Saul Steinberg New Yorker Map – poking fun of one’s own parochialism while celebrating it.
Readers will learn about the love affairs of Craig Claiborne, James Beard, Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower, the drug and alcohol habits of various food celebrities. Kamp feels the need to take sides in various internecine feuds. For example, he quotes numerous rivals and detractors of Alice Waters, pioneer of the goat cheese/walnut/baby greens California local style. Over the years, she has struck some ex-friends, ex-lovers, and ex-acquaintances as smug, bossy, promiscuous, politically naive, and not a very good cook. The takedowns of Waters strike this reader as a “foodie” variant on “punching up” – drawing attention to oneself by criticizing someone who is popular in order to get attention. Waters didn’t have to be perfect to be a pioneer. Though she may be temperamentally unsuited to win the political battle for a sustainable food system, she has been a founding visionary, and that counts.
I enjoyed the book. It was fun to read about the origins of trends that played as the food version of life’s soundtrack. But it made me squirm a little. While I was reading the book there was butternut squash evangelized by a Full Belly Farm stall staff person waiting on my countertop. I craved raisins to go with it, inspired by childhood tzimmes. In the supermarket bulk bins, next to the golden raisins were tasty-looking sour cherries. I bought them instead. I mixed the squash with chopped walnuts and sour cherries. Yum, and wow. Farmers Market butternut squash bears no resemblance to the bland supermarket product. The sweet squash, tart cherries, and savory walnuts were a simple and inspired combination.
You see, I am also a bastard cultural stepchild of Alice Waters. At social events in the Bay Area, one of the perennial topics of conversation is local food. As someone who came up from middle class cookery in which canned mushroom soup was a major food group, I’ve looked to magazines and cookbooks and blogs for entree into broader worlds of tasty and sophisticated food. The pleasure and guilty self-recognition reminded me of the promo blurb on the 80’s classic “Preppy Handbook” — “look, Muffy, a book about us!”
The King of California
Who are the agribusiness giants with a lock on so much of California’s water? The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of A Secret American Empire is a history of the vast cotton empire in the dry bed of what used to be a large inland lake in the California central valley. The founders of the empire, Horatio Alger adventurers from Georgia, bought up land, had four rivers dammed, dried up the lake and used the water for irrigation.
The Georgia farm emperors brought elements of plantation culture with them; poor white, Mexican, and black laborers had rough lives, with the most opportunity available for whites, some opportunity for Mexican immigrants, and the least opportunity for black laborers, although racist violence and sharecropping oppression wasn’t as vicious as the south. There were attempts to organize, and grueling strikes; in the end unions lost their foothold.
The cotton empire was able to lock in its own water supply from the rivers that used to feed the lake, so they weren’t involved in the great state and federal water projects that send Sierra water south. They did participate in the strange alliance between Northern environmentalists and central valley agriculture to defeat the peripheral canal in the early 80s; the greens thought the proposal didn’t protect the environment enough, and the farmers thought that it might protect the environment too much. The cotton giants also played a role in the endless legal battles to work around the 160 acre limit for federally funded irrigation projects, a rule which was only obeyed in creative workarounds and exceptions. The book has interesting, behind-the-scenes glimpses of the seduction of politicians to support the exemptions.
The book touches on the environmental degradation caused by industrial agriculture; the destruction of the native habitat, of course; the poisoning of water, fish, birds from toxic buildup in the water; the poisoning of workers from pesticides, and the hostility of the farmers to the scientists attempting to measure the impact of the poisons.
The authors are former LA Times journalists, and it shows in the style. The story is built, piece by piece, from interviews with the secretive main character, family members, executives, retired laborers, washington lobbyists, and from records of legislative sausage-making and legal battles. The strength of the style is journalistic narrative drama and attention to detail, in stories about family feuds, boardroom battles, and immigrant sagas; and a fine eye for tragedies that passed un-noticed in the wider world; the babies who died of hunger in strikes, a 16-year old black farm worker without a license who died when the truck he was driving overturned, the Native Americans who remembered the once lush lake territory. As journalists in the muckraking tradition, the authors have a keen sense for corruption at petty and grand scales. The book’s weakness is a lack of systematic perspective on the social, political, and environmental context. The authors are Californians and have a strong feel for the background stories. They have opinions that shape the stories, and they state their conclusions explicitly at the end; plantation agriculture is by its nature bad for democracy, and the balance between commerce and environment has been drawn much too far towards commerce. But the authors’ style or knowledge shies away from the big picture.
Conclusions for peterme: I strongly recommend this book. Excellent in sweep, drama and detail. I bought the book wanting to learn more about California’s agribusiness giants, and their role in politics, environment, society, and the book satisfied those goals.
The book also got me thinking more about cotton. I prefer to buy produce local and organic where possible, but hadn’t given too much thought about fabric. Given the environmental cost of cotton, perhaps I should go for organic cotton too. But where farmers market food is a good value in high season, and the quality is astoundingly great, organic cotton staples seem to be 4x the price of conventional, the selection is skimpy, and the quality, hard to say. Organic cotton seems to be at an earlier stage of market maturity than organic food, which was pricy and scrawny 20 years ago. Being an early adopter will help grow the market.
Who is the online chief of staff?
Big news and much chatter this week about the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff for Barack Obama. The chief of staff is head gatekeeper for the office of the president, and chief of outreach to Congress. A critical organizing role for the community that is the 3D US Capitol.
What about the online community that the Obama administration wants to continue into the presidency. With Change.gov, and the post-election evolution of MyBarackObama.com, who will coordinate outreach to and filter input from the communities online who have new capabilities to communicate directly?
What year will the online chief of staff be a role whose influence is powerful, acknowledged, announced and debated in the news?
Republicans, meet reality.
I listened to a telling example of the detachment of Republican conventional wisdom from reality, last weekend while washing dishes. Two conservative bloggers, Ross Douthat and Jonah Goldberg fretted on Blogging Heads about the impending Democratic victory. How could it be that the Republican party betrayed our vision of limited government, and what will happen to that vision when the Democrats take power? They did see that Republicans had *not* lived up to their promise of “small Government”. But they had only the foggiest of pictures of what Republicans had been doing.
They acknowledged some of the Bush administration’s problems with incompetence and corruption. What they didn’t see was that their beloved vision of “small government” had been paid for by corporate interests who wanted the freedom to dump hog manure into vast lakes, or invest vast quantities of other people’s money with minimal collateral. The small government vision hadn’t been betrayed by a few corrupt greedy people. It had been bought by the corporate lobby from day one. Libertarian arguments, and honest libertarians, too, are and always have been the pawns of communally destructive self-interest.
Douthat and Goldberg acknowledged that some of the issues like “busing” and “crime” that helped Republicans gain power decades ago were no longer salient, that recently, Republicans had not been successful at persuading the public about the dangers of immigration, and that Republicans had not delivered on the social conservative agenda. What they didn’t see at all was the pattern behind these single issues — the fact that, from Nixon’s southern strategy to Karl Rove and Sarah Palin, Republicans have sought to win elections by picking some minority to demonize, and that strategy is starting to backfire spectacularly, with Hispanic voters, young voters, voters in the “unAmerican” parts of Virginia, all voting for the candidate who inspired with a vision of American unity in diversity.
They acknowledged that the Iraq war was a well-intentioned mistake, and the neocons had been a bit too optimistic. But they saw the failure as a failure of tactical execution. They didn’t acknowledge that the fearmongering, militaristic style of patriotism that characterized the Republican convention had burned peoples synapses; the word terrorist is a Pavlovian cue for many fewer people, and the promise of the circus isn’t distracting people this year from the uncertainty about where they will get bread.
It is a fine thing that conservatives and Republicans are reflecting on their recent failures. But unless they understand the relationship between the goals of the coalition partners – corporate, fundamentalist, pro-war; and the outcomes of Republican governance, they may not make much headway. Whether and how they can face these things honestly? Not my problem. I do miss sane republicans. How to wrest some sanity out of the corporatist, militarist, nativist, theocratic mess that Bush republicanism became? Really glad that’s not my problem.
No on 8 – don’t (just) blame the Mormons
There was a vocal demonstration at the Mormon temple in the east bay, large enough to block traffic. Sure, the Mormon church should get into big trouble with the IRS if its role in political organizing can be demonstrated. But let’s be real here — there was 49% turnout in San Francisco County and 55% turnout in Alameda which voted overwhelmingly against Prop 8. There was 59% turnout in San Mateo county. If we the supporters of marriage rights for all had done a better job of helping our neighbors and friends to vote, the result would have gone the other way. The result was in many respects a failure of execution. I care much less about yelling at Mormons and much more about turning out allies and persuading people on the fence about justice for all.
Citrus: A History
What was most interesting to me about Citrus: A History was not any of these main threads of the story: origins in Asia, spread by Jewish and Arab trade and settlement in Europe, its spread the the New World with colonialism and slavery, the connection to real estate empires in Florida and California. Other intriguing sections of the book include a citrus grower in the Carribbean who was a pioneer in the anti-slavery movement, and the role of citrus crate art in promoting the myth of California. But what was most interesting to me about the book is its premature victory hymn to the triumph of industrial agriculture.
The author, Pierre Laszlo, is an emeritus chemistry professor, and he is attracted to the stories of the early and mid-20th century government scientists who innovated in finding and developing new strains of citrus and growing methods. Without irony or caveat, he praises the great California irrigation projects that send Northern California’s water through the Sacramento/San Joaquin delta into the Central Valley, to feed vast citrus plantations. If a dedicated policy and scientific program was able to create today’s monoculture agricultural empires, a different policy and scientific research could create different, and more sustainable results.
An Amazon reviewer criticized the book for being like a cut-and-paste collection of Wikipedia entries. The criticism has some merit. Orange: A History, takes many of its anecdotes from easily-found secondary sources The book certainly does not have the coherent narrative and research of classics in the genre, like Sidney Mintz Sweetness and Power, which tells a powerful and tragic story of the rise of sugar production through the colonial system, and Cod, by Mike Kurlansky, which tells the tragic story of the decline of the once-ubiquitous Atlantic fish. Some cursory browsing finds some of the claims in Orange dubious. It’s a nice story that citrus was first brought to Europe and North America by Jews using the citron to celebrate Sukkot, but it is contradicted by other easy-to-find sources.
Summary: if you’d enjoy a collection of anecdotes about the history of citrus, you’ll enjoy this book. If you want to read some brilliant nonfiction on the history of food, read Mintz on Sugar or Kurlansky on Cod instead if you haven’t already.
Taking on the System
How does “Kos”, the founder of the vast DailyKos web-based liberal community site, think about online organizing? Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in the Digital Era is Markos Moulitsas Zuniga’s manifesto, a self-concious descendent of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for radicals.
It seems counterintuitive, but much of Kos’ methodology for online organizing is about using digital tools for storytelling and advocacy to affect traditional broadcast media. Where 60s radicals got the attention of the mass media with colorful street protest, those tactics have worn out much their usefulness. 21st century organizers use the net to bring stories to the mainstream media and keep stories on the air; like Trent Lott’s support for segregation and Virginia Congressman George Allen’s “macaca” racism.
Kos’ thinking is much like a mass media political consultant; he thinks in terms of creating compelling narratives with heroes and villains, suspense and victory. He takes lessons from the right wing think tanks in terms of “working the referees” by providing prepackaged opinions and spokespeople for progressive ideas. And he has tactics for political combat, such as “punch up, not down” – making powerful political enemies can be an advantage if it brings fame and credibility.
Kos is proud to be more partisan than ideological. He believes with some justification that the weakness of the left has been the focus on ideological purity and individual causes above pragmatic victory. So environmental groups and womens groups would support moderate Republican candidates, even though a Republican majority would be on the whole much worse for the causes of the environment and reproductive freedom.
But a tactical, pragmatic, narrative-oriented approach could also lead to winning battles but losing the overall war. Without an overall progressive vision, it’s hard to say which compromises to make. It’s one thing to help get candidates elected; and other thing to monitor that the candidates are actually better once elected.
Kos’ tactical focus on influencing the existing mass media is effective and powerful. It is only counterintuitive from the perspective of naive techno-determinists. At the same time, the tactical focus leaves for others more ambitious efforts to “be the media.” The “talking heads” shows will continue to be influential, and placing new and different speakers is needed to change the terms of debate. Meanwhile, over at TalkingPointsMemo, Josh Marshall gradually builds an alternative model literate, partisan, rigorous journalism.
Taking on the System avoids what I think is the worst weakness of Alinsky’s work. Alinsky conceived of political organizing as enabling the powerless to confront the powerful. By definition, the organizer works behalf of those without power; it would be a contradiction in terms for the powerless to win. Kos doesn’t have any trouble thinking about winning; it may not be fast or easy; but it is possible and desirable to pass civil rights legislation for gay people and to staff Congress with progressive democrats with backbone. Where Alinsky led protests, Kos leads efforts to get candidates elected and and unelected.
But an attraction to power can lead to co-optation. It has been exciting to see NetRoots Nation, the conference for progressive bloggers, draw the presidential candidates and many congressional leaders, showing that the netroots have become an influential constituency. But it was disconcerting and distressing that while NetRoots nation was under way in 2008, while bloggers were hobnobbing with legislators and party honchos, Congress passed an extension to the FISA legislation that legitimized warrantless wiretapping. Liberal bloggers were partying while the Democratic congress helped mortgage the constitution; the netroots didn’t or couldn’t use the access of Netroots Nation to demand adherence to the constitution.
Kos’ pugnacious partisanship appears to be a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s vision of transcending red and blue America, though, in standing up for himself against attacks and proactively defining his opponents, Obama is demonstrating the desired backbone. Time will tell whether the postpartisan rhetoric and zealous partisan advocacy are complementary, with the partisans creating air cover for the post-partisan success; or whether they are opposed, with an outcome of cross-party harmony, or progressive victory with victors setting the terms. My guess is that they are complementary; a guess bolstered by the Obama campaign’s late unleashing of 527s to help with campaign defense.
Kos himself focuses largely on media and message; he pays much less attention to the nitty gritty of getting out the vote, fundraising, and lobbying once the candidates are elected. Which isn’t to say these things aren’t important; the large Kos community is a platform for much fundraising, cheering and support for volunteers doing canvassing and voter registration; and some legislative advocacy too. I don’t think that Markos himself would argue that his interests are the only important aspect of organizing, and would be glad to acknowledge these complementary disciplines.
In a few places, Kos’ wisdom comes across as a bit facile. In one chapter, he exhorts entrepreneurial organizers to boldly reach beyond their previous experience and not ask for permission to lead. The organizers of Netroots Nation taught themselves how to coordinate a conference and then recruited pros. Eli Pariser taught himself the brand new art of email advocacy. In another chapter, he encourages activists to stick to their knitting, and not to go beyond their area of core strength, as when Cindy Sheehan attempted unsuccessfully to play a larger role as global peace activist. Stick to your knitting and dare to dream are both fine aphorisms, but how to tell which is which? Kos doesn’t really say.
Overall, Kos’ book is a strong contribution for those who want to participate in online organizing, and those who want to understand the role of DailyKos and the Netroots. Clay Shirky’s Here Come’s Everybody was light on how new digital tools will be used for organizing. Taking On the System provides a rich picture of a critical set of tactics and methods for organizing online.
Governor signs sustainable development bills
Two important bills escaped Governor Schwartzenagger’s veto temper tantrum. SB735 requires regions to connect transportation and housing plans to reduce the need for car travel and help reach greenhouse gas targets. AB 1358, the Complete Streets Act requires city and county general plans to take into account the requirements of pedestrians, cyclists, the elderly and disabled.
The suburban pattern of development in post-WW2 US wasn’t “natural” — it was shaped by policies that favored the automobile and sprawl. These two bills are major steps to reverse that trend.