Dog Days End, 61st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The Dog Days of the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar coincide almost exactly with the Gregorian months of July and August. They began on July 2 and end today, August 31. Autumn starts tomorrow.

It was a bit more comfortable today, at least drier if not cooler. I got a long walk in today, nine miles, although my miserly phone only gave me credit for an 8.3-mile Van Buren. To be sure, it's still summer and I sweated and needed a shower as soon as I got back home, but walking outdoors didn't feel like walking through soup at least. We'll see if summer actually ends by the first day of USC autumn tomorrow (it's forecast to be a degree warmer than today).

Speaking of weather (which I'm aware that I speak far too often of), the remnant of Dolly are still forecast to arrive at Mar-A-Lago this week, although all eyes are of Tropical Storm Five, soon to be Eduardo,  which is scheduled to make landfall on the Texas coast tomorrow afternoon. Where it goes after that is anybody's guess, but if you live in Texas Hill Country, be advised - there might be flash floods this week.

There were flash floods on the Colorado River this weekend, killing two, and twelve are still unaccounted for. The death toll from the flash flood last week in Nepal and Tibet has risen to 939 people, with more than 4,400 missing on the two sides of the border.

The current El Nino is now stronger than at any point in the last 1,000 years. Not going to be stronger, not forecast to be stronger, it already is stronger and will only gain strength. We know it's stronger based on fossilized Galapagos Island corals which were studied to reconstruct the strength of previous El Nino/La Nina cycles. Studies of the fossils have confirmed that recent Super El Ninos in modern times are significantly stronger than anything recorded in the pre-industrial age. Temperature variability is now 36.5% higher than during the pre-industrial period up to 1850, with a clear skew in the positive direction showing that it is primarily the El Nino rather than the La Nina phase which is getting stronger.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed your Dog Days. Here's to an auspicious Autumn! 

 

 

 

The Glass Limbo, 60th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): In the 1980s, New Zealand researcher James R. Flynn identified a consistent rise in IQ scores across the world throughout the 20th century. This became known as the Flynn Effect, and was initially interpreted as evidence of humanity getting smarter - perhaps thanks to better nutrition, education, and healthcare.

But by the 1990s, the trend reversed. Because of its compulsory military service, Norway had a massive database of cognitive testing, covering more than 730,000 men from 1962 to today. The data revealed that IQ scores peaked among those born around 1975 and have been declining since. The average drop is about 7 points per generation.

Similar trends have been identified in the UK, where teenagers in the 2000s tested lower than their 1980s counterparts, and researchers elsewhere around the world have observed the same pattern in developed countries.

The leading theory is that the decline isn’t genetic but environmental, a reflection of how modern life is reshaping our brains. Today’s children grow up immersed in a world of screens, scrolling, and superficial content. Quick dopamine hits from social media and 30-second videos have replaced deep reading and problem-solving. Studies suggest that merely checking your phone or email can temporarily reduce IQ by up to 10 points. Educational systems, pressured to meet standardized benchmarks, often "teach to the test" rather than nurture independent thinking.

As a society, we’ve lost the traditional checks on intellectual quality. Before social media, books and journalism underwent rigorous editing. Now, content floods our feeds without any such gatekeeping. As a result, many people are absorbing the thoughts not of experts or educators but of influencers, bloggers, and pseudo-celebrities, many of whom probably couldn’t pass a high-school exam.

Kind of explains how some 73 million Americans could vote for the Stable Genius, doesn't it?

 

Listening, 59th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Georgians have paid $1.4B extra for gas since the start of the Iran War according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But I still see MAGA adherents on social media saying the Stable Genius is tirelessly working day and night to do everything he can for the working man and to lower prices, and any inflation or rising prices is still Biden's and Obama's fault. 

Remnants of Dolly are still producing showers and thunderstorms and could produce strong to near gale-force winds and rough seas. The National Hurricane Center forecasts the remnants making landfall in South Florida, so there's still a chance it could wash away Mar-A-Lago, that gaudy infestation of corruption and refuge for pedophiles. A separate low-pressure system in the northern Gulf waters is producing scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms and has a low chance of development into a tropical storm over the next week. 

Despite somewhat cooler temperatures here in Atlanta today, I didn't take my alternating-day walk today. The reason was simple: there was a Red Sox-Yankees doubleheader today. Any Red Sox-Yankees game is a good reason to alter one's plans, but a double header and both televised (we don't get that many televised games here in Atlanta, and I refuse to pay for the NESN app or for the MLB package on cable), well, that's a whole other matter. And this season, when the Red Sox have mounted a turnaround and comeback of Biblical proportions, and this series, with so much playoff potential on the line, well, that seals it. Walk, schmalk - I'm gonna couch potato it today and watch all 18 innings (at least) of both games today. My trail's not going anywhere but maybe my Red Sox are. We shall see.

 

Waymarks of the Otherland, 58th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): The number of people now missing from the flood in Nepal has risen to 1,924, with 93,000 survivors in a state of "great need." This is beyond heart-breaking. The humanitarian crisis is almost beyond comprehension. 

Historian Heather Cox Richardson is about the only person I see picking up on the story about RFK, Jr. lying to Congress. In her newsletter, she notes that Kennedy’s visit to Samoa empowered anti-vaccine activists there, and after he left, a measles epidemic killed 83 people. Knowingly lying to Congress is a crime, although it is rarely prosecuted. Still, the apparent proof that Kennedy lied to Congress is a clear opening for hearings into Kennedy’s testimony, history, and conduct in office, including changing the vaccine schedule after promising not to. If Senator Rand Paul could only redirect some of his irrational hatred of Anthony Fauci toward the U.S. health official who actually is harming the health of Americans.

Yesterday, RFK, Jr. suggested that Governor Josh Shapiro’s announcement of the deaths of two unvaccinated people in Pennsylvania from measles might “have been altogether fabricated by one of the Governor’s hopeful staffers.” One of the deceased was a newborn, too young for the vaccine and thus dependent on herd immunity. 

The MAGA/MAHA faction is playing the some old game they tried to play during the covids. "They didn't die from covid - they died from respiratory failure," and "Covid didn't kill them, pneumonia did." Those arguments ignore the fact that the respiratory failure and pneumonia were caused by the covids and/or exacerbated by the covids. It's like if I dropped an anvil on someone's head and tried to argue, "The anvil didn't kill then, they died of blunt force trauma."   

As forecast, Dolly petered out in the Atlantic and is no longer considered a tropical storm. There may still be damage and flooding from heavy rains in the Leeward Islands from the remnants of Dolly, but it looks now like the poetic justice of Mar-A-Lago being washed away by Hurricane Dolly isn't going to come to pass. We're counting on you now, Edouard.

 

Day of the Iron Gate, 57th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): The area of low pressure southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands is now officially Tropical Storm Dolly. I suppose the alphabetical naming sequence was going to produce the name "Dolly" regardless of the news, but it seems a little ironic that it came up right after the death of Dolly Parton.  

In any event, T.S. Dolly could be nearing the Leeward Islands by this weekend but is forecast to degenerate into a tropical wave before it reaches there. Still, heavy rain from this system could begin to affect the Leeward Islands late Saturday and early Sunday, and the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola by Sunday and Monday. The heavy rain may produce flash flooding, especially in mountain areas.

Light rain was falling when I got up this morning, but I still managed to get in a five-mile Monroe during the afternoon. I deliberately walked a somewhat shorter route due to the humidity and chance of showers in the late afternoon, although as of 5:30 pm, they still haven't materialized.

Another tree fell in the neighborhood early today, blocking one of the three entrances to my block. No one was hurt, and power wasn't affected, but yet another tree down feels ominously prophetic.

Documents obtained by The Guardian and the Associated Press indicate that U.S. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. lied during two congressional hearings last year when he told lawmakers that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines.” However, in a letter to the Samoan Prime Minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, using the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” eight times. In the letter, he wrote that he believed the deaths of two children there were associated with an MMR vaccination, adding “I would propose my team conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines.”  Kennedy’s Samoa visit came just months before a measles outbreak swept through the island, killing 83 people. This week, two unvaccinated people died in Pennsylvania from measles. Kennedy needs to be impeached and removed from office immediately for lying to Congress before his reckless and superstitious polices kill more Americans.

U.S. ships handle approximately 71 million metric tons of freight annually through Canada's St. Lawrence Waterway, approximately 50% of the system's total traffic. The 15-lock bottleneck known as the St. Lawrence Seaway in Ontario conveys around 37 to 38 million metric tons annually. The majority of U.S. freight moving through the corridor consists of heavy bulk commodities like iron ore, agricultural grain (wheat, corn, soybeans), and construction and energy materials like stone, cement, salt, potash, and liquid petroleum products. 

Wouldn't it be fucking hilarious if Canada shut the Seaway to U.S. freighters in retaliation of the Stable Genius' tariffs and trade war, or started charging exorbitant "access fees" to U.S. traffic, just like Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz? The Stable Genius could rename the waterway the "Strait of Whore Moose."

 

Day of the North Sea, 56th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): The pain in my chest is completely gone. Vanished. Kaput. Even if I breathe in as deeply as I can and put my full attention on where I used to feel the pain, there's nothing. As if it never happened. Five more days until I see the doctor, but at this point, why bother?

Showers and thunderstorms associated with the area of low pressure a few hundred miles southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands have changed little in the past several hours. Environmental conditions are still favorable for development into a tropical depression, which could form over the next day or two as the system moves westward across the Atlantic. However, conditions are still forecast to become less favorable for development over the weekend.

Let's take a look at the headlines. "More than 150 bodies found with hundreds still missing after powerful floods along Tibet-Nepal border sweep away houses, roads and bridges." That's heartbreaking, and my empathy and compassion go out to all survivors. 

"Tim Curry, star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and It, dies at aged 80." Impermanence is swift - first Dolly, now Curry. I wasn't a fan of Rocky Horror - I went to one midnight showing in the 1980s, threw toast at the appointed time and yelled, "Janet, you bitch," on cue but never understood some people's enthusiasm. 

"U.S. faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada." Nothing highlights the idiocy and incompetency of the Stable Genius' policies than the continued appearances of the most expected outcomes to his actions. The jokes about "So full of shit, we literally ran out of toilet paper" just write themselves, which is good, because we're probably out of writing paper, too. 

"Judge allows postal service effort to restrict mail voting, for now." Seriously? What the fuck, amerika? Why are you so enthusiastic about ruining this country?

I missed my alternating-day sitting today. I put it off until too late, and then spent several hours on the phone and in email with my sister trying to figure out why I can receive texts from her, but my replies go to some other persons who's getting real annoyed about the unsolicited messages he's getting from me. I can still make up the lost time with an evening sit, but I probably won't - it's okay to miss a day here or there, as long as one doesn't make a habit out of it.

 

Swept Into, 55th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Six more days until I can see a doctor, but now the pain in my chest (heart? lungs? muscle?) is all but gone. If I breathe very, very deeply, I can barely feel a trace of it, and probably wouldn't even notice it if not for the more acute pain last weekend. Now I wonder, should I even tell the doctor about it or just allow him to examine me and let him find what he finds. If I say something, it'll be x-ray, at least - probably an MRI - and who needs that? 

Dolly Parton died today. Impermanence is swift. I liked her - the person, the philanthropist, the feminist icon. Couldn't stand her music. I like country music, I just don't care for her brand of cornball Nashville pop, though - too many syrupy strings, maudlin lyrics, simple rhythmic structures. Give me Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Dwight Yoakam, even George Strait. But beyond her music, Dolly made the world a better place and was a good person. We'll miss her.

Showers and thunderstorms associated with an area of low pressure southeast of the Cabo Verde Islands appears likely to become a tropical depression during the next day or two while it moves westward across the Atlantic. Environmental conditions could become less conducive for development by the weekend.

Two unvaccinated people died of measles in Pennsylvania. Impermanence is swift and the unvaccinated make it even swifter, and there's no need to elaborate on that statement any further. 

I got in (another) argument with Google AI today. I asked it to translate the Arabic phrase, الترجمة الحرفية فعلاً مضيعة المعنى, لو هترجمها هفكك الجملة الأول, and it replied, "literal translation truly ruins the meaning; if I were to translate it, I would break." I asked it to give me a figurative or general translation then - I mean, I don't need a literal translation and I certainly didn't mean to break the internet with my simple request. Again, it replied, "literal translation truly ruins the meaning; if I were to translate it, I would break." 

Now I was getting mad. "Just fucking try, you goddamn stupid bot," I wanted to say, but I didn't. I toned it down and asked it to at least translate the key words for me. "'الترجمة الحرفية' is 'literal translation'," it replied. "'فعلاً مضيعة المعنى' is 'truly ruins (wastes) the meaning'." It was only then that I realized the Arabic phrase I was asking about was, in English, "literal translation truly ruins the meaning; if I were to translate it, I would break" and that I had left off the rest of the sentence, "I would break down/deconstruct the sentence first."

Okay, the AI won that round, but it got lucky. My bad. Don't let that happen again.

 

The Deserted Garden, 54th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): As you can see, I'm posting again today, so it means that I'm still not dead. The pain in my heart or in my lungs or whatever when I breath in deeply died down but did not disappear yesterday, and it stayed at the same low but still noticeable level all day today. Seven more days until I can see a doctor. 

The State of Nevada filed a lawsuit challenging the Department of Interior and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to cut their access to water from the Colorado River by 20%. Much or most of the water goes toward agriculture, mostly alfalfa for feeding livestock. Beef prices are up, along with almost everything else, and in an attempt to address the affordability crisis, the Stable Genius announced he will allow 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported, mostly from Argentina, and sold 25% below market value for the next 90 days. However, China reportedly rejected a 22-ton shipment of beef from Argentina in March after detecting traces of a banned antibiotic, and concerns over an international screwworm epidemic have consumers worried about the safety of Argentine beef.

Some are calling for a 90-day boycott on beef until the Argentine import window closes, but I would take it further than that. Stop eating beef altogether. In fact, stop eating meat. Do you want to throw a monkey wrench in the Stable Genius' plan to claim he's addressing affordability while simultaneously helping out his far-right friends in the Argentine government? Want to save the Colorado River? Stop eating beef. Stop eating meat. 

Eat like I've been eating for the past several years: an English muffin and black coffee for breakfast, a banana-strawberry-blueberry smoothie for lunch (just not Publix' frozen blueberries, because they're contaminated with E. coli), and a salad for dinner. Peanuts for snacks between meals. You'll lose weight and feel better, as well as save water in the Colorado and elsewhere, and muck up the Stable Genius' import plans. Win, win, win. You can thank me this time next year (just kidding - there will be no next year).

Just kidding - no one knows what's in the future or if there will even be a future. No one knows what in our beef or where it's from, what's on our blueberries, what's in our drinking water. No one knows the true extent of our military losses in Iran, or who's winning the Ukraine-Russian war, or the full scope of the atrocities in Gaza. No one knows why each sequel to Game of Thrones is worse than the one before it, or why the original GoT went ass-up in its final season.   

No one knows how long they will live, or when they will die.      

 

Entryway of the Dipper, 53rd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Not dead yet. The heart is still ticking, and all day yesterday, as the hours passed, the pain that I had experienced in my chest became less and less noticeable and required deeper and deeper breaths to experience. I can still feel it today, but only on the deepest of breaths, and it feels more like a "pressure" than something I would call a "pain." Also, now it feels more like it may be my lungs instead of my heart. But what do I know? I'm not a doctor.

Still, better safe than sorry. I scheduled a doctor's appointment for the 61st and final of the Dog Days, which was the earliest I could get.     

As my internal body falls apart, I watch the external world fail as well. It's still oppressively hot, and I used my health today as an alibi to not push things and take my alternating-day walk (it all started after my walk two days ago). But it's really the heat and humidity - who wants to work out in that soupy weather? 

The Stable Genius is now in a trade was with Canada, of all people, and is laying the groundwork to declare a national emergency by spewing election conspiracy theories to sow public distrust in the democratic process. A study found that 85% of personal-care products tested, ranging from shampoo to baby lotions, contained unlabeled toxic chemicals, including phthalates, PFAS, and formaldehyde. Dog food is being recalled due to the presence of metal contamination, eye drops over sterility issues, and foods rang from jalapeño peppers to ice cream to soup due to Salmonella and Listeria. A recall of frozen blueberries (a staple of my daily smoothies) sold at Publix stores (where I get them) was upgraded to its highest health-risk classification due to an E. coli outbreak. It's getting to the point where you don't want to go to the supermarket anymore without a printout of the latest FDA recall notices, but even that is no longer considered a reliable source.

The world is shit, the United Snakes is completely off the rails, it's too hot to walk outside, and my internal organs are going through some things. But at least now I'm free from the scourge of paying reasonable prices for timber products from Canada.

 

Lion of the Virgin, 52nd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): I'm 72 years old and slowly dying. Old age, gradual slowdown of metabolism and immunity systems, etc. The doctors tell me I'm actually quite healthy "for my age," but that qualifier is an acknowledgement of the mortality inherent in existence.

I bring this up because right now I'm wondering if I'm not having some kind of cardiac incident. I'm 99.9% sure I'm not having any sort of heart attack but starting yesterday, after my Madison in the brutal Dog Day heat of Georgia, there's a sharp pain in my chest whenever I breathe in deeply.  

I'm not experiencing shortness of breath, dizziness, or the feeling of a constriction in my chest, the classic warning signs of a heart attack. A former coworker of mine had a heart attack while he was home alone and managed to drive himself to the hospital, and later told me it felt like there had been an elephant sitting on his chest. It doesn't feel that way at all to me. Just a sharp pang deep in my chest whenever I breathe in deeply.

My chest isn't sore and there's no pain when I touch, prod, or even thump on it. There's no pain between deep breaths and no pain during ordinary, casual breathing. But on a deep inhalation, I feel a sharp. little stabbing sensation right in my left breast. I worried if my heart hadn't somehow become enlarged, and the pressure from fully expanded lungs wasn't causing the pain, or if it was just some old-man muscle ache after overexerting myself during the peak of a Georgia summer.  

I decided against going to the Emergency Room on a Friday night while they triage between gunshot victims and auto-accident survivors. I figured I'd wait and see if it passed, got worse, or what. Eventually, I even managed to nearly forget about it while I was breathing easily during my evening leisure in the comfort of my home. 

I didn't want to sleep on my left side, but eventually found myself  rolling over onto my left anyway. I don't give much credence to the interpretation of dreams, but as I slept I dreamed that as I was walking through a parking lot, someone suddenly opened a car door and pinned me to another vehicle and I couldn't escape. I awoke wondering in the dream wasn't my subconscious reacting to the sensation in my chest. I fell back asleep, but in a subsequent dream I was holding some cute but bizarre furry little animal to my chest, the subconscious mind apparently still fixated on that part of my body. 

When I got up this morning, the pain was still there and still only when I took a deep breath in. As per my morning ritual, I took my blood pressure and it was 105/66, well within normal range. A "normal" blood pressure doesn't mean there's not a problem, but an abnormal BP would have been a red alert. 

To see if the pain was muscular or internal, I ran a little experiment. I took an Aleve, which I find quite effective at easing muscle pains, and sure enough, after a while I could still notice the sensation during a deep inhalation, but it was far less intense. I experimented further during my alternating-day meditation today, deliberately breathing in deeply to observe the sensation, leaning into the pain rather than trying to avoid it was per one's usual custom. Sure enough, the more times I did it, took a long, deep breath in, the less the perception of pain in my breast. The sitting occurred some six hours after I had taken the Aleve, so it couldn't have been the drugs finally kicking in.

It's now been 24 hours since I first noticed the pain. I'm not going to the ER tonight (Saturday nights are even more chaotic there than Fridays), but I was planning to schedule my annual wellness exam soon, so come Monday morning, if the creek don't rise and I don't have a coronary, I'll schedule an appointment with my osteopath and discuss my little internal science projects with him.  

 

Source of the Danube, 51st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): As the water drops to unprecedented levels in the Danube River, old Nazi shipwrecks are emerging from the waters in Eastern Europe. A fisherman found a live WWII mine in the Danube in Slovakia, and in Serbia, a steam tugboat from the early 1900s emerged from shrinking waters of the Sava River. The ship, once a famed vessel known as the Slovenian, is called Sava's Titanic by locals.

Here in the United Snakes, a new framework for managing the shrinking Colorado River calls for California, Arizona and Nevada to reduce their consumption of water from the river by roughly 40%.  The cuts will require the three states to rely more on groundwater, to limit or even cut off some users, and to invest more in water-efficiency projects. They could also increase pressure on the agriculture industry, which uses nearly half of the water to grow crops used for animal feed, such as alfalfa. Building megacities and framing in the desert was never a sustainable proposition. 

I got my steps in today, 12,060 of them to be exact, in a 4.7-mile Madison. There were no active heat stress warnings here in Atlanta, but the 91° temperature and 68% humidity (dew point 74°) made me feel even hotter and more uncomfortable than when we were under one of the dreaded heat domes. In fact, the fatigue that quickly set in as I was walking is the reason I cut the walk short at a Madison rather than shooting for an eight-mile Van Buren or a nine-mile Harrison, although I did resist the temptation to take the early shortcut back to the house and walked that last mile. What doesn't kill you makes you stranger.

 

The Mississippi Delta, 50th of the Dog Days,  526 M.E. (Electra): A door-to-door salesman came through my neighborhood today, apparently promoting a window-washing company. The neighbors freaked out, went on high alert, and generated no fewer than 35 messages to the group chat and an untold number of additional "likes," "ha-has," and "hearts." Eventually, the police were called and if they could, I think the neighbors would have mobilized the State National Guard.

One person said a nanny they hired told her that the salesman tried to take a package off their front porch and looked "dirty." I have trouble believing that. Porch pirates typically don't ring doorbells throughout a neighborhood, calling attention to themselves and appearing on umpteen doorbell cams. And it's unclear why he wasn't able to take the package but could only "try." And on those aforementioned door-cam photos that the neighbors traded amongst each other, he didn't look "dirty" to me.

I think what happened was the first poster to the group chat was alarmed and asked if anyone else saw the salesman or knew anything about him. Everyone else reading the initial post reacted more to her alarm than the actual situation on the ground - a salesman ringing a doorbell. Then the alarm built up into a panic,  the panic spread from household to household, people started talking about turning their dogs loose on him if he came to their homes, and shared second-hand opinions they got from their children's nannies. 

Of course, by the time the police were summoned, the salesman had picked up on the vibes in the 'hood and had long since left. But I can safely say we are now free of the menace of unsolicited offers to wash our windows ("I am the viper! I've come to vipe your vindows!").

In the early 1990s, I lived in a converted barn with a chicken coop next to my house. I always had fresh eggs, and some weekends I'd step into the henhouse to grab a couple of eggs right from the nest for breakfast. Sometimes, late at night, I'd hear a random "bwaawk!" from one hen or another for some unknown reason, which inevitably was answered by another "bwaawk!" from a second hen. Soon other hens, wondering what all the "bkaawking" was about, joined in, and before you knew it, the whole henhouse was going crazy, "bwaawking" and flapping their wings and panicking over they-knew-not-what. After a minute or two of chaos and confusion, it all calmed down, and soon only four or five hens were still going at it, then two, and then finally one letting out one last "bwaawk" before everything went back to quiet for the night.

Today's experience was not dissimilar.

 

The Endlong Ride, 49th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The weather wasn't as obnoxiously hot today as earlier this week and I got my steps in - 20,914 of them on a nine-mile Harrison at a leisurely 1.5 to 2.9 mph. 717 calories burned while walking, 1,194 so far on the day.  

There's nothing like the 106° heat index earlier this week to make a 92° day with low humidity feel downright comfortable.

Today's walk was the first in six days due to rain last Helios and oppressive heat on Betelgeuse. Friendly reminder that the days of the six-day week in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar are Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Castor, Deneb, Electra (ABCDE), and Helios. I managed to get my sitting in on the intervening Aldebaran and Castor, but I notice that it's more difficult to motivate myself to sit if I hadn't been walking. One practice nourishes the other.

There's no virtue in difficulty finding motivation, but a practice without difficulty doesn't prepare one for difficulties in life. Overcoming discomfort to downright pain while sitting prepares one to deal with the inevitable pains in life. Letting go of the expectations of a reward for sitting sets one up to deal with the lack of rewards in existence. Thoughts like these are what drew me to Stoicism, and why I now consider myself a Contemplative Stoic rather than a Zen Buddhist. 

Just before the last mile of my usual walking route, there's a turnoff that would get me back to my house in about an eighth of a mile. My feet were getting sore, my legs tired, and I was wet with sweat, and it was tempting to take that short cut. But the same willpower that allows me to sit for all three of my 30-minute sessions during meditation motivates me to walk that last mile, or the willpower that motivates me to walk that last mile allows me to sit for the third period. One practice reinforces the other.

          

  

 

Day of the Great Roots, 48th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): I accidentally discovered the cure for teenage cell-phone addiction: slow chargers.  

In a California trial against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta is accused of covering up internal research showing Instagram is addictive for teenagers. The plaintiffs, representing 29 states, say the company knew its products were harmful to children but hid that information from the public.

I've fallen down the Instagram rabbit hole myself, realizing that I wasn't paying attention to whatever I was purportedly watching on television but instead mindlessly scrawling through post after post as the algorithm kept feeding me whatever it was that it determined was engaging my interest.  

But then my 10-year-old charger, a relic from the days of iPhone 6, started losing its potency, taking longer and longer to charge the battery. Even after being on charge overnight, it was only 65 or 70% recharged when I got up in the morning. And the charge works like gasoline in an old v-shaped fuel tank - the lower it goes, the faster it drains. So each night, I was starting the slow recharge at lower and lower levels, and waking up to lower and lower partial recharges.

You can't spend hours on end on a dead phone. I started recharging during the day, plugging it in and leaving it on recharge for hours and hours during the day. Even after I finally got it up to "high" levels, like 80 or 90%, then I was prudent with its use, as I didn't want to drain it back down again.

Long story short, I bought a new charger and everything's fine. But if Apple, Meta, or some other company sold slow chargers to deliberately maximize off-line time, teenagers might start doing other things with their time while their phones recharge. Like, maybe, you know, sex and drugs. 

I might need to think this through a little more.

 

Day of the High Cities, 47th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Man, is it hot! Still 96° F at 6:00 pm, with a heat index value of 104. The high today was 97°, which felt like 106. Needless to say, I didn't get my steps in today. My alternating-day walk can wait until Deneb. 

Yesterday's high was 98, just a few degrees shy of Atlanta's record for that day of 101° set back in 1954. They say it's going to be a little bit cooler tomorrow (92°) with a heat index of 97, so that's a relief. 

The a.c.'s been working overtime, and last month's electric bill was in the triple digits. I happily paid the bill, because if I lose power for any extended period of time, I might roast to death. 

People (well, some people, mostly Yankees) mock Southerners for being "slow," but that slowness was a learned adaptation from the days before Willis Carrier, the patron saint of the South, invented air conditioning. To stay cool and to generate as little caloric heat as possible, people started doing things with an almost exaggerated slowness. You'll be just that little bit less hot if you took 30 seconds to walk to the bedroom than if you made it in 15. People started to do everything in a sort of slo-mo fashion, from placing a folder in a filing cabinet in front of an oscillating desk fan to chopping some Vidalia onions in the kitchen. The adaptation became a sort of cultural affectation, a sign of being a true Southerner, and it's been handed down through the generations even though Carrier's gift to the world now keeps us comfortable. 

But you can't have air conditioning without electricity, and you can't have electricity is areas that rely on hydroelectric power without water. And one of effects of the heat and associated drought in much of the U.S. (and the world) is that major sources of hydroelectric power, like Lake Powell and Lake Mead, are so dangerously low that power may have to be rationed in certain Southwestern cities like Phoenix, which hit an unbelievable high of 113° F today. The drought is so severe in Panama that water may not be available to operate the locks in the canal, and disruption to the canal could limit global trade and impact economies. 

According to data from the AAA, the national average price of gasoline was $4.06/gallon on Monday, $0.05 higher than last week and $1 more than a year ago.  The U.S. gas prices this month are the highest ever recorded for August and have been elevated since last February when the war with Iran began and the Strait of Hormuz closed. Meanwhile, even as peace talks between the the United Snakes and Iran have stalled, the Stable Genius has made new military threats against Oman, because use of military force against Iran worked out so fucking great.

It's not the meat, it's the humanity.

 

Day of the Sledge, 46th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): What's important to take away from Kodo Sawaki's statement, "there is no use to doing zazen," is that Kodo isn't discouraging the practice but rather just encouraging us to practice without expectation of a reward. "Really do zazen that is of no use."

In the ordinary world, everything we do is for some purpose or another. Everything has some use. We get out of bed to start our day, we go to work to earn money, and we earn money to obtain the goods to meet our needs. The purchase of that cup of coffee at Starbucks works for all parties involved because we want that coffee more than we want that dollar in our pocket, and Starbucks wants that dollar in our pocket more than they want that cup of coffee. Both parties are exercising their free wills to meet their individual needs. 

One dollar for a cup of coffee, of course, is a rhetorical simplification to make that example flow a little easier. As Garrison Keillor once said while broadcasting a remote episode of Prairie Home Companion, "Ah, Seattle, home of Starbucks and their great experiment to find out exactly how much an ordinary American is willing to pay for a single cup of coffee."

My point is we do everything for the expectation of an outcome, from our daily routine to financial transaction to exercise and even leisure (if I don't expect to be entertained by a movie, I probably won't go to see it). But Zen teachers repeatedly say that in the spiritual practice of zazen, we should not expect anything in return. Don't practice to seek enlightenment, don't practice to become a Buddha, don't practice to find relaxation or to become more mindful. All of those or none of those may or may not happen. but we're encouraged to practice just for the sake of practice, to do a zazen that is of no use.

The big question, of course, is how. How can I sit still for five, or twenty five, or ninety minutes or more and not expect anything in return? "Oh, I get it," we think, "don't expect anything and then I'll get everything." No, that doesn't work either, as you're still thinking that eventually you'll get something, if not "everythng."

Granted, you need some motivation to start a spiritual practice, but once on the path the trick is to lose whatever it is that motivated you. My approach has been to incorporate every-other-day mediation into my daily schedule to the point where it's now automatic and I don't think about motive or reward. Brushing our teeth before bedtime is a good habit for dental health and to prevent tooth decay, but we don't weigh the pros and cons of toothbrushing each night or even decide whether or not to do it. We just automatically brush.  

Maintaining a daily schedule that includes regular sitting and staring at a wall for some length of time is a deliberate act, but after some time, maybe weeks, maybe months, maybe even years, one stops thinking of "why" or "for what," and just sits. For no purpose. Of no use.

 

Ninth Ocean, 45th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): Today is the 228th day of the year, if we include the leap year day we don't recognize this year. 228 is the nineteen dozens, and some dozenth days are recognized in the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar as Ocean days. Today is the ninth of those Ocean days, even though its the 19th dozen and not the ninth dozen. The next Ocean doesn't occur unto the 44th day of autumn.

Autumn seems like an eternity away from now, in these hot, sweaty Dog Days. We're under another heat dome and another heat advisory today, with hear index values forecast to be up to 109° F. The good news is that as predicted, both tropical waves in the Atlantic have fizzled out without turning into hurricanes, and no tropical storm activity is anticipated in the Atlantic for the next seven days. Hawaii is having a rough time of it right now, however.

I wasn't looking forward to my alternating day walk in this stifling heat, and felt relief when a helpful rain shower appeared to give me an alibi not to walk. 

Here are some random quotes I've gathered to make it look like I actually have something to say today:

Woman has hitherto been treated by men like birds, which, losing their way, have come down among them from an elevation: as something delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, and animating - but as something also which must be cooped up to prevent it flying away. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Pursue the good ardently. But if your efforts fall short, accept the result and move on. - Epictetus

What is the use of doing zazen? There is no use in doing zazen. Until this penetrates your thick skull, and you are really doing zazen that is of no use, it is really of no use. - Kodo Sawaki

   

 

The Three Faces, 44th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): When a person is alone, they're not so bad. When they form a group, a sort of mental paralysis occurs and they become so befuddled they can no longer differentiate between right and wrong. Some people deliberately join a group just to experience mental paralysis, sometimes even paying a fee, because group think and hive mind are so much easier than thinking for oneself.

Don't take my word for it (you probably don't anyway), but test it for yourself. Go to a sporting event and see if you can find anyone not on the opposite side of the field who doesn't think the home team is the best team ever. Go to a concert and see if anyone in the audience doesn't adore the band on stage and doesn't think they're the best band ever. Go to a Republican gathering and see if anyone will admit that the Democrats might have some good ideas worth sharing, or go to a Democratic convention and see if anyone supports Republican principals (just kidding, Republicans don't have principals). 

As far as spiritual matters are concerned, I think its best for an individual to go it alone. Forget your popes and pastors, your swamis and gurus, your rabbis and imams. Avoid teachers, avoid experts, and most especially avoid scholars - scholars are the worst.  

I'm convinced I'm on to something by being a self-described, self-defined urban monk. I live among the people but allow myself to be lost among the crowd. A hermit, a recluse, a lifelong bachelor, whatever label you want, I live among the people but not with the people. Some might call it misanthropic, but I like individual lower-case people - it's the upper-case People I distrust. 

The tropical wave over the central Atlantic continues to produce disorganized showers and thunderstorms. While environmental conditions are conducive for some development over the next few days, the system is expected to encounter strong upper-level winds next week, decreasing its chances for further development into a hurricane.     

 

Day of the Antler, 43rd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): I'm available to be the Stable Genius' next press secretary, if he can accept a candidate who'll tell the truth, thinks Christianity is bat-shit crazy, doesn't trust White people, and hates his fucking guts. 

But I'm free Tuesdays through Thursdays (Mondays and weekends don't work for me).

 

Rustle of the Prey, 42nd of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor):  Deneb, Day of Destruction, 31st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E., or as you probably call it, August 1, 2026, was the warmest day ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. And the El Nino is just getting started. 

A former co-worker of mine, an arch-conservative and climate-change denier, adamantly insisted there was no credible evidence that carbon dioxide affected atmospheric temperature. He would insist that I read some pot-boiler fiction by Michael Crichton, and when pressed on the issue, would hold up  a set of cassette tape lectures he owned titled Water, Not Carbon, Determines the Climate, or some such other drivel. I reminded him that the Eocene had the highest temperatures in the geologic record and the highest levels of carbon dioxide, but he just took that as evidence that nature, not man, controls CO₂ levels, but ignored the correlation between temperature and carbon.  

As for water controlling the climate, I reminded him that Venus can reach an average temperature of 850° F, and if it ever had any oceans, they dried up long ago. However, it is covered by a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide and clouds made of sulfuric acid, which, together, trap heat and warm the planet. He insisted that it's self-evident that the only reason Venus is hotter than Earth is that it's closer to the Sun.

I pointed out that the Moon is just as far from the Sun as the Earth,  and can reach temperatures of 250° F in the sunlight. At night, temperatures on the moon drop to below -200° F because it lacks an atmosphere to trap heat after the sun goes down. "Trivia," he sniffed, and walked off with his comforting copy of Water, Not Carbon. 

To be fair, he wasn't a particularly bright man. He also lived in the far exurbs and relied on his cars (he owned several) to get around, get to work, shop, worship, and socialize. His existence was dependent on gasoline-powered internal combustion engines. He took any discussion of climate change as a prelude to limiting CO₂ emissions, and any limitation of CO₂ emissions as an existential threat to his way of life. 

Anyway, tl/dr: it's hot out.

The Brother Heart, 41st of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): In the 1979 Stephen King novel The Dead Zone, an ambitious and corrupt demagogue grabs a young child on stage at a campaign rally and hoists him up as a human shield after an assassin opens fire. A photograph of the act gets picked up by the press and destroys the politician's career. 

That's fiction. In real life, the Stable Genius was in Ankara, Turkey last month for a NATO summit. Concerned about his proximity to Iran and the Islamic Republic's death threats against him, he boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras to leave for England, and then snuck into an airport catering container and was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane, not Air Force One or the new Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar.

The press corps and White House staff flew in the Old Air Force One as human decoys in case Iran tried to launch a missile (they didn't). They were told to keep the window shades down, but believed the President was on board the plane with them.

Hiding curled up in a little catering container mounted on a mobile scissor-lift is hardly the macho-man symbol of strength the Stable Genius thinks he projects. Letting the press and his staff serve as unwitting decoys may not be as viscerally shocking as holding up a child as a human shield from an assassin's bullets, but it's just as cowardly.  The ethical thing to do in that situation would have been to secretly board the third plane, and then announce that the Air Force One flight was unexpectedly delayed and keep it on the ground until the Stable Genius appeared publicly in Britain, so that would-be assassins knew their target wasn't on the plane.

But just imagine - curled up in a ball in the fetal position in a catering container, sweating your balls off in the summer heat of Ankara while smelling your own farts and adult diaper during the bumpy ride from one plane to the next, all because you're too afraid to fly in the Eastern Hemisphere.

When the news leaked that he wasn't flying home in the new Qatari gift jet that he had flown on to Turkey, but it was still believed that he had left in the old Air Force One with his staff and the press, the Stable Genius sought the telephone records of several New York Times journalists and their relatives, including one reporter’s mother, in its effort to unmask the confidential sources of the leak. Now we know why he was so sensitive and so freaked out by the reports - the truth of the matter unmasks not only his own cowardice but the lies that he and his black-out drunk Secretary of Defense keep telling about the war in Iran. 

They insist that they've won the war, that they have air supremacy, and that Iran has no military assets left after their relentless bombing. If that were the case, what were they so afraid of? Hiding in a little caterer's cart from one plane to the next sure doesn't look like "winning" to me. It looks like weakness. It looks like losing. It looks like cowardice. 

That act alone should be enough to derail a person's political career, but in this anything-goes, "grab 'em by the pussy" Age of the Stable Genius, it's just another news cycle.

 

Day of High Happening, 40th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): As we sit and watch the planet die, it's now official: July 2026 (i.e, the first thirty of the Dog Days) was the hottest month ever recorded in the history of the United Snakes. Last month's average temperature was 76.9° F, topping the 76.8 mark set in July 1936, and 3.3° F warmer than the 1901-2000 average 

The average global sea surface temperature, outside of the polar regions, was the highest on record for July, beating the previous high of 2023. Surface air temperatures around the world in July were cooler than July 2024 by just 0.01° C, leading scientists to consider the two months as the joint-second warmest Julys on record.

In Washington and Oregon this year, more than 2.9 million acres have burned as extreme conditions fueled the fast-moving fires that draped the region in toxic plumes for weeks on end. Oregon has suffered more burned acreage this year than any in recorded history, while Washington is in its most destructive fire season. ever, and the dangers are far from over. There are still months left to go before the highest risks to the desperately dry landscapes begin to subside.

In Spain, officials are worried that the hundreds of thousands of people heading to the hills and beaches to get a better view of Wednesday's solar eclipse will increase the risk of renewed fires. Meanwhile, water levels in the Danube River are at record lows, exposing Roman-era bridges and World War II German warships. 

 

In China, fears over flooding and landslides forced authorities to evacuate more than a million people from their homes last night as a powerful typhoon made landfall. In addition to the torrential rainfall, the typhoon has also fueled a heat wave and Hong Kong recorded its hottest day ever. 

A large area of showers and thunderstorms a few hundred miles southwest of the Cabo Verde Islands is moving lowly westward, and a tropical wave emerging off the coast of west Africa is expected to interact with the system in a couple of days. A tropical depression could form during the latter half of this week while the system moves westward across the central Atlantic toward the Caribbean.

Showers and thunderstorms associated with a separate tropical wave are located about midway between the coast of west Africa and the Lesser Antilles. Some gradual development of this system is possible through mid-week while it quickly moves westward across the central Atlantic toward Venezuela.

Another tree fell in my neighborhood, this one blocking the path along my local walking trail about a mile from my house.  

As Jim Morrison once put it, "I want to get my kicks before this whole shithouse goes up in flames."

 

The Deep Sea Alien, 39th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Helios): A planned power plant for a new Amazon data center in Texas could become the United Snakes' largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Five people in Louisiana and two in Florida have died from Vibrio vulnificus, a flesh-eating bacteria that thrives in warm coastal waters. Vibrio are most common from May through October where seawater tends to be warmer. Due to climate change, however, outbreaks have occurred in recent years in places once thought to be too cold to support the bacteria, such as Chesapeake Bay and the Long Island Sound. 

When you order something from Amazon, you increase the risk of a crabber in Maryland or an oysterman in Patchogue being devoured by flesh-eating bacteria.

You monster.

 

The Moving Hand, 38th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Electra): Much of the problem with trying to talk about consciousness is the word itself is so fluid. "Consciousness" could mean mere awareness, of it could mean sentience. It could mean the creation of a richly detailed mental model of the ego-self, or the luminous experience of that rich creation, including memory, preferences, emotions, and thought. 

In Buddhism, consciousness usually means only awareness, and specifically the awareness associated with each of the six sense organs (eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind). They've even gone so far as to define 18 forms of consciousness, three for each organ, such as eye consciousness, sight consciousness, and the realm of vision consciousness. 

The focus in Buddhism, or at least Zen Buddhism, is more on "mind" than consciousness. "Mind" isn't the brain, mind is a function of the brain. Just as sight is a function of the eye, and vision the result of sight, thought is a function of the brain, and mind the result of thought. The brain is just another organ, one that secretes thoughts just like the spleen secretes bile and the pancreas secretes whatever it is the pancreas secretes.

I once heard a Zen teacher object to the phrase "I can't get my head around that." Of course you can't, the skull is hard, thick bone, not exactly noted for it's flexibility. Brain matter is softer and probably more malleable, but I wouldn't recommend trying to physically wrap the organ around an object. It's the mind that moves, as they say, and it's the mind that wraps or doesn't wrap around an object or a concept. 

So, are plants conscious? They seem to respond to light and to rain, so they must have some sense of awareness of those phenomena, so I suppose you can say that a plant possess some form of body consciousness and it's corollary, touch consciousness. Whether their reaction to light and rain is in response to sensation or is just a biochemical reaction to photons or water is debatable, but aren't all of our thoughts and feelings and sensations reducible to mere neurochemical reactions? But when that form of potential sensation in a plant is simply called "consciousness" and lumped in with all the other forms of consciousness, confusion begins, and others argue that a plant can't be conscious because it doesn't have thoughts (or at least an organ to secrete thoughts), but they're talking about different things. It's like saying a blind person can't have memory because they don't have sight. 

Today, Electra, was a sitting day. There are among the thoughts my mind secreted as I sat. Now, if I could only get my head around those ideas.       

 

Day of the Mantle, 37th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Deneb): My Friday routine is finally different from the previous four days of the Gregorian week. It starts the same - radio alarm at 7:00 am, one hour of WREK's The Classics and a second hour of their Just Jazz programing (although neither is strictly "the classics" or "just" jazz). Make my coffee and take my vitals. As I continue to awaken, I take on the NY Times crossword, Spelling Bee, and Wordle puzzles over my first cup of coffee while I catch up on the news, both MSNOW and email newsletters from Axios, the Guardian, and the Times (I like to triangulate my coverage a bit to get different perspectives).. 

But Fridays are different, because in addition to the daily puzzles, the Times also has a Friday news quiz. I got nine out of 11 right this week, and it's actually something of a point of pride for me not to get them all correct - a 100% score indicates I've spent too much time doom-scrolling and watching the news. Everything in moderation, brother.

But Fridays are famously New Music day, the day most labels release their latest albums. I get some notifications of new releases via email, and each Friday I check out NPR's online New Music Friday lists, and Spotify's Release Radar. Today's emails alerted me to a new edition of Jim O'Rourke's Steamroom series (number 68) on Bandcamp and of Thor Harris' new Ditch Girls project, also available on Bandcamp as well as streaming on Spotify, which is surprising because he took much of his own music off of the platform a year or two ago. NPR listed a new albums by electronic artist Lawrence English and by Alabama indie rocker Lee Bains, both of which I found on Spotify. And finally my Release Radar included an album by avant-garde percussionist David Moss (who I used to see in the 1970s performing with local Boston jazz band Baird Hersey & the Year of the Ear) featuring a cast of all-star collaborators including John Zorn, Arto Lindsey, Fred Frith, Bill Laswell, David van Tieghem, and Jamaaladeen Tacuma.

Much of my Fridays are consumer by tracking down all those musical leads and time spent listening to it all. To make it worse, I got a late start today because I was up late last night listening to the Red Sox' 13-inning win over the Chicago White Sox, quite honestly one of the best baseball games I've followed in years (Boston came from behind five times to tie the game, three times in extra innings). 

I fell so far behind that I wound up blowing off my alternating day walk. The forecast at 2:00 pm said there was a 70% chance of rain between 3:00 and 4:00, and that was good enough for me. The rain never came, but to be honest, I didn't want to walk today. I was tired and enjoying all my new Friday music. I try to get in an eight-mile Van Buren on my walks, but if a one-mile walk is named after Washington, the first President, what do I call a day with less than one mile covered? A King George, I suppose. Today was a mad King George day. 

Fridays once also meant watching Bill Maher on HBO but not anymore - fuck that guy. He's changed - I think the covid shutdown broke him - and he's now insufferable. I don't mind hearing opinions with which I disagree, in fact, I like listening to an intelligent debate on the issues, but when the opinions are presented in his smarmy, self-righteous manner, while he changes the subject as soon as one of his guests dares disagree with him on something, it becomes unwatchable. It's too bad - I hope Bill get the help he so clearly needs.

And finally, happy hour! As a rule, I don't drink during the week (although I make exceptions) but on weekends, I allow myself a beer or two, or a glass of wine, or a cocktail (although I make exceptions). Limiting drinking to weekends lessens the potential of turning into a full-blown alcoholic in my retirement, and gives the weeks a greater sense of rhythm. And surprisingly, it's also made me enjoy alcohol less and less - some weekend nights, I simply don't feel like drinking, or finding that there's nothing in the house to drink, simply shrugging it off until the next weekend.

And so it goes. Saturdays are about the same as Fridays, although without the new music, and Sundays are about the same as Saturdays, although with John Oliver on HBO providing the nightly commentary I used to enjoy from Bill Maher.  

And that's my week. Thus is the life of an urban monk, this high-functioning introvert/misanthropic hermit. Just thought you'd want to know.

Now I Make the Moves, 36th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): After my walk yesterday, after the subsequent thunderstorm, and after I posted to WDW, another tree fell in the neighborhood. A pine, just like the tall, tall trees that surround and tower over my house. I get spooked every time a tree falls, partially PTSD from 2020 when a tree fell on my house, shattering the roof, and partially from the assumption that a falling tree will probably be my demise. 

Impermanence. If a tree falls and no one takes it as a reminder of the ephemeral nature of existence, does it contain any karma?

I don't want to sound like one of those pundits constantly complaining about misleading headlines in the New York Times and other mainstream media, but today The Guardian ran a headline, "Mitch McConnell leaves rehab center to continue recovery from fall at home," with a photograph of him in a wheelchair, wearing a jacket and tie, being led from a stately-looking room. He looks old and he's in a wheelchair, but he still looked far healthier that I imagined he would. Quite frankly, I suspected that he was either already dead or at least brain-dead.

It wasn't until one clicks on the headline for the full article that one finds a caption stating that the photograph was from last May, and McConnell was in the Capital being taken to a policy luncheon. I thought it was quite deceptive of The Guardian to use a photograph that appeared to depict what the headline read ("leaves rehab center") when for all we know he left the center in a stretcher or on a gurney. Or in a hearse. We still don't have proof of life.

I found the winner of today's "hilarious but true" typo in an online forum about climate change. "The bulk of the evidence suggests that if we stopped our emotions, global temperatures would stabilize (+/- a few tenths of a degree)." The poster obviously meant "emissions," not "emotions," but either way they still have a point - if we control our emotions, or more precisely, if we stop allowing them to control us, our outlook and behavior would stabilize. And when we stop flying off the handle and upsetting others, their outlook and behavior stabilizes, and so on in a karmic feedback loop. 

I'm going to try and start thinking of temper and anger as "carbon emotions" and see if that helps me reduce their emission.