The Books of Bokonon

Wait...who am I kidding? But maybe there were some moments that were pretty okay, as well as a few developments that were actually positive . A vaccine for Malaria strikes me as very beneficial.  I tend to take good news where I can find it.

  The above photo is one I took of some wildflowers in my back yard (or as my British friends would say, garden) this past summer. I was just looking at an illustrated article on Vox about rewilding as a strategy for mitigating climate change . Although I am skeptical about individual actions amounting to all that much when it comes reducing our carbon footprint (much of what really needs to be done has to happen at a much more systemic level rather than an individual level), I do see some benefit to doing what we can realistically do. In my case, I've had the same home for a bit over a decade now. I inherited a lawn that looked like the lawns of several of my wealthier and now deceased neighbors. The grass was immaculate when it came to weeds, and no doubt some money was sunk into whatever chemicals were needed to keep the lawn looking like something out of a magazine. As a practical matter, I really did not have the money, so aside from keeping the grass mowed, there was not much...

Yes, you read that correctly. Here's a video explainer:   Of course attributing specific weather events as linked to climate change is a bit tricky, this is the sort of event we might expect to see more of as the average temperature across our planet increases. This particular pattern affecting the Sahara region is apparently at least partially responsible for the unexpectedly quiet hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean, as one of the presenters points out. And while all of that has been happening, we've seen some extreme heat in the western US . I lived near Seattle from 1983 through the summer of 1985 as a teen. The thought of air conditioning was considered absurd. If you had high temperatures in the 70s (Fahrenheit)/low to mid 20s (Celsius), that would seem warm. Although an extremely hot day or two were not completely out of the question, they were very much the exception. These days, you would definitely want central air in your home. Thankfully, most vehicles come with ...