Updates
Minutes later: I cannot make this up. To prove my point (see story below), someone looking for the answer to this question:
rome in snow is global warming true?.
09:53:03 -- 23 minutes ago
ended up on my site.
Original Post
Years ago when I watched network television (ABC, CBC, and NBC) I knew it was the weekends when the news was only about the weather. All week long, stories out of the Middle East, out of the White House, and out of nowhere. But then, come Saturday and Sunday, the lead story was invariably a weather story. Journalists and newsmakers take the weekend off, also, it appeared, and it appears.
So, I guess the same holds for me. I was not going to post this as a stand-alone post (honestly). I had already posted it at "
Global Warming Central, 2011 - 2012," where I place updates. But when I read the lede, it was too important to not post here with some of the usual rambling comments.
Here is
the lede:
London's Heathrow Airport, the world's busiest air hub by passenger traffic, cancelled a third of the day's flights, while much of Britain was blanketed in snow, leaving drivers stranded on roads overnight.
In Italy, which reported a seventh victim, snow-covered Rome was virtually paralyzed, thousands of people were trapped on trains, and the weather emergency sparked runs on supermarkets.
And the story goes on to say that nearly 300 deaths directly attributed to the cold have now been reported in central Europe.
Fracking and global warming have something in common. Science no longer matters. Both issues are now in the political arena where it is being fought out between elitists (the one-per centers) and the rest of us (the 99 percenters).
For global warming, folks keep sending me notes that the science is still accurate, that the earth faces catastrophic consequences due to anthropogenic global warming. It no longer matter whether the science is right or wrong. Two things: tell it to the folks affected by the story above. And then tell them, that to keep warm, their utility costs will have to increase dramatically to pay for alternative energy sources.
So it goes with the controversies surrounding fracking. Science no longer matters to folks who are against fracking.
I suppose there is one difference. Most of the concerns about fracking have to do with consequences that are in the near term, geologically speaking. And yet, after thirty or forty years of fracking and tens (hundreds) of thousands of fracked wells, there have been no adverse consequences confirmed from same.
On the other hand, we are told we will have to wait at least a century, probably longer, to see the consequences of anthropogenic global warming (if it exists -- that is one difference: we know fracking is going on; I cannot say the same for AGW. )
Bottom line: how "we" deal with fracking and AGW will be how "we" deal with most issues: politically.
Notes to the Granddaughters
Speaking of myths, here is simply a bit of rambling for my granddaughters. I advise others not to read the following.
The older granddaughter, now 8.5 years old, has talked about becoming a marine biologist "when she grows up." She and I spend much time reading about sharks, and we never miss an opportunity to visit local public aquariums. A couple of weeks ago, she was given a personal tour of the Boston Aquarium by one of the staff members because of her knowledge and her interest.
Her other two interests in reading are Shakespeare and mythology. I have no idea how that all started. She reads the children's books on Shakespeare and knows the plots of at least two of the tragedies (
Macbeth and
Hamlet). We go back and re-read them (or portions of them) often.
Likewise, she reads and re-reads her children's books on mythology, and knows more than I do on the genealogy of the gods. I remember having trouble locating Apollo on a huge wall chart of mythic genealogy and she, somewhat sarcastically, told me he was right next to his twin sister, Artemis. She knows all their personalities.
The other night down at the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge (no connection to Harvard University), I ran across a new book on mythology: Jon Solomon's translation of Giovanni Boccachhio's
Genealogy of the Pagan Gods. It was a real struggle to decide whether to buy it, and if I did whether to buy it at the bookstore or through Amazon.com. No doubt it would be less expensive through Amazon.com but I ended up buying it at the bookstore (for many reasons).
It's a very thick book, about two inches, but very compact. It's kind of a pain to carry in the backpack because of its thickness; it's 887 pages with index and notes. The thickness / length is a bit misleading. Each facing page on the left is the original Latin and each facing page on the right is the translation. My favorite subject in middle school was Latin, partly because of the subject matter, but mostly because of the teacher who made it come alive for me. I think we can all name the handful of teachers or classes that were our favorite, and 8th grade Latin and Mr Becker were among my favorites.
I didn't open the Boccaccio book for several days; I was afraid I had made a mistake in buying it and did not want to be disappointed. But gradually, little by little, I have been reading it and am not disappointed.
I often have to go back and start reading a book all over agin, having forgotten what I've read, and that's true in this case also. I think this is the third time I have read the introduction to this book, but this time I can honestly say I understand -- or at least think I understand better -- how incredibly important this book is.
Boccacchio was an incredibly faithful Christian living in the 14th century.
Here [in the final two books of the 15-book genealogy] the author [Boccacchio] becomes an advocate of the propositon that the pagan poetry he has been discussing throughout the work has great value in revealing divinely inspired truths to the reader who has been properly guided through allegorical hermeneutics.
When Boccaccio writes of ancient poets in Book 14, it is not to recount and interpret their fables but to cite the lives of the authors as moral and ethical exempla superior to the contemporary icons revered by his detractors or to compare the value of their fables with those told by and about Christ. ....
Aware of the different spiritualities underlying his chronologically broad spectrum of sources, ... Boccacchio accommodates what he considers to be pagan irrationality within a traditional Christian context.
And this:
Perhaps no passage in the Genealogy is more indicative of Boccaccio's ability to reconcile his pagan and Christian sources than the chapter in Book 15 in which he affirms eloquently and at length his commitment to Christ by citing stories about a fictitious pagan character in Terence and the historical pagan King Mithridates of Pontus.
The book is a reference book, and will be useful in sorting out some of the inconsistencies or unknowns or unreported stories in my granddaughter's children's mythology books.
The commitment, learning, and passion Boccaccio poured into his defense of poetry and the study of pagan literature in Books 14 and 15 contributed to making the Genealogy a standard text for literary critics, scholars, and poets of the Renaissance, and it remained an intellectual high-water mark for Sidney, Wordsworth, and Goethe, who was reportedly reading the Genealogy during the final days before his death.
The 800-page book (technically about 350 pages of mythology) represents the first five books of the 15-book genealogy. The publisher says the rest of the ten books will be published subsequently, but that is a lot of translation yet to be done, so we'll see.
And this is how I'm relaxing, waiting for the Super Bowl tonight.
