2009.10.07 19:00 - The End of the Long Summer

The Guardian for this meeting was  Paradise Tennant. The comments are by Paradise Tennant's.

doug Sosa: hi.
Tennant: hiya doug
doug Sosa: so quiet sometimes.

Paradise Tennant: how are you this evening :)
doug Sosa: tired. night before last i started reading a new book and couldn't stop
doug Sosa: so read all night, then meetings all day yesterday and again this morning and then the long drive home.
doug Sosa: Yourself?
Paradise Tennant: hmm that is a nice kind of tired what is the book?
doug Sosa: well, its The End of the Long Summer.
Paradise Tennant: hmm do not think I have heard of it
doug Sosa: A very competent and distressing view of climate.
Paradise Tennant: ahh
doug Sosa: 12,000 years of relatively stable warm, looking like coming to an end with unpredictable results.
Paradise Tennant: all because we fell in love with the automobile?
doug Sosa: At the same time, though not that night, reading don quixote. great contrast!
Paradise Tennant: :) indeed been a long time since I read it ...
doug Sosa: no, not the auto, the long summer would come to an end anyway. in the last 400,000 years
doug Sosa: only several warm periods as long.
doug Sosa: or as stable.
Paradise Tennant: so we are to bundle up
doug Sosa: well, heating looks like it is first. the tragic effects are on agriculture.
Paradise Tennant: and populated regions in the developing world
doug Sosa: yes.
doug Sosa: Both our understanding and the facts themselves seem to be n a gal up.
doug Sosa: n-in
Paradise Tennant: there is confusing science on it
doug Sosa: the science seems pretty clear. co2 and temp go up and down together, but we have now increased the co2 well beyond the normal cycle.
Paradise Tennant: is the coming volatility linked to our consumption of resources
Paradise Tennant: or naturally occurring
doug Sosa: this within the say 10,000 year cycle
doug Sosa: both. that is the weird part. It was coming anyway but we seem to have accelerated it.
Paradise Tennant: how rapid will be the change
doug Sosa: Interesting little sidelights.
doug Sosa: like the purple glaze on oily residues by mudflats.
doug Sosa: is from plankton so ancient the go back to nitrogen rich atmosphere, that being because of the nitrates in runoff from age.
doug Sosa: support the little fellows.

doug Sosa: Rapid not sure.
doug Sosa: 15 min :)
Paradise  Tennant: ;)
doug Sosa: historical record from tree rings and ice core drilling suggest changes can be very rapid, few years, and start suddenly.
Paradise Tennant: we are always part of a much bigger picture
Paradise Tennant: scary
doug Sosa: And we have big events going on, the co2 rise, the much more rapid melting - and breaking up - of glaciers.
doug Sosa: so i couldn't sleep, read the book. figured good to get it behind me. i am much more
doug Sosa: settled now than i was the other night.
doug Sosa: Stewart brand is coming out with a new book Wednesday on how tech can solve all the problems.
Tennant: ;)
Paradise Tennant: what did you experience in the last 90 secs

BELL
doug Sosa: well, complex feelings.
doug Sosa: a long conversation today about the difference between looking at humans as logic machines vs. concerned with love, despair, hypocrisy, chagrin...
Paradise Tennant: lol we are anything but logical
doug Sosa: much more interesting.
doug Sosa: the 90 sec for you?
Paradise Tennant: there is an emotional intelligence I am convinced that is a great processor of information... though sometimes below the surface
Paradise Tennant: just quiet... long day
Paradise Tennant: at rest
doug Sosa: wonderful recent book Philosophical baby, about little ones and how much smarter about feelings than adults.
 Tennant: yes you mentioned it .. will look for it
doug Sosa: it is really quite thrilling.
Paradise Tennant: you mentioned you had read temple grandin 's work .. really like her perspective
doug Sosa: Ah, right. Now i remember. yes. temple too is good.
doug Sosa: autism is so sad.
Paradise Tennant: :) she has empathy
Paradise Tennant: hmm not so sure it is sad
Paradise Tennant: just different
Paradise Tennant: not sure...they would comprehend it as a loss because there is a flip side gain
doug Sosa: yes. There is another book by an autistic mathematician, haven't read it but hear an interview with him on BBC. very impressive cast of mind.
Tennant: tremendous visual comprehension
Paradise Tennant: on a blue day ?
doug Sosa: blue day?
doug Sosa: ah, book title, maybe that's it.
Paradise Tennant: that was a lovely book by an autistic savant .. who is perhaps the smartest person in the world on some parameters
doug Sosa: And why do you read about autism, and if so, what else?
Paradise Tennant: like science
Paradise Tennant: history
Paradise Tennant: biographies
Paradise Tennant: usually have about five on the go ..
Paradise Tennant: one that is pure fluff
doug Sosa: I just read simon schama's American Future, really good.
doug Sosa: And rereading Polanyi Great Transformation.
Paradise Tennant: ;)
doug Sosa: Novels?
doug Sosa: I am just reading The Welch Woman
doug Sosa: and Mararet Atwood's new systopic The Flood.
doug Sosa: dystopic
Paradise Tennant: she is good ..i have heard her read
Paradise Tennant: well I just finished What Happens When We Die by Parnia.. rereading brian greene the fabric of the cosmos very very good been dallying through a sense of the world by jason roberts ...nice historical biography
Paradise Tennant: ;)
doug Sosa: good these are one's i don't know. from the other side..
-BELL
Paradise Tennant: just started why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller by jeff rubin .. a bit repetitive but he has been right more than wrong..
Tennant: you know we should likely get back to a pab topic of sorts
doug Sosa: well, interesting question, why aren't these core to PaB?
 Tennant: they are abstractions
Paradise Tennant: items of interest
Paradise Tennant: but not reflection
doug Sosa: why are they not items of reflection?
 Tennant: long way off of reality
Paradise Tennant: well usually opinion .. argument .. factual .. rhetoric are expressions of the ego
doug Sosa: so is he economy real?
Tennant: economies are group think
Paradise Tennant: is group think real
doug Sosa: but is that not real?
Paradise Tennant: or a shared distraction
doug Sosa: distraction from..?
Paradise Tennant: i guess the first response would be the true nature of mind
doug Sosa: but is not that true nature also a collective judgment?
doug Sosa: part of a culture?
doug Sosa: culture...
Tennant: no there is something much more elemental fundamental
Paradise Tennant: I suspect
doug Sosa: To me what s important, what l has learned from Pub, is the possibility of looking at experience without categories.
Paradise Tennant: or judgments
doug Sosa: "fundamental" privileges some kind of things vs. other kinds of things.
Tennant: no deeper... beyond... dualistic thought
Paradise Tennant: there is nondualism
doug Sosa: yes, experience is not dualistic.
doug Sosa: it just is.
Paradise Tennant: think of nondualism as completely out of the box .. of our .. usual mental grid
Paradise Tennant: beyond the self...the observer... the anything
doug Sosa: I agree, it is a deep and distressing part of our upbringing, education...
doug Sosa: i think need to go and let you read five books and not be too exasperated by me. :)
Paradise Tennant: have a good nite doug .thanks kindly for dropping by .. :))
doug Sosa: we both dropped by. equal. bye.
Paradise Tennant: nite nite