THE HAMMER OF THOR… AND LIZ AND BARBRA AND GEORGE AND KAMALA
Lately, I’ve returned to my roots in investigative journalism. I’m trying to get to the bottom to a recurrent episode of collective madness where every four years a marauding posse of celebrities, media figures, and supreme court justices go rampaging through the political landscape w...
Erectile dysfunction is ascendant, so to speak. The Super Bowl displayed a trifecta of impotence potions as the makers of the three main drugs –- Levitra, Cialis, and Viagra-- all ponied up millions to advertise. Obscured by the debate about some of the cringe-making disclaimers – “if erection persists for more than four hours seek immediate medical attention” – has been the obvious question: why are erectile dysfunction drugs advertised on the Super Bowl at all?
Professional football has long been the high altar of American maleness. Everything about it celebrates warrior culture, physical dominance, and raw aggression. The same is true for NASCAR, another venue that impotence drug makers see as fertile ground. What’s going on here? Aren’t the wimps and sexual no-shows supposed to attending the Philharmonic and reading Spinoza? Shouldn’t Eli Lilly be sponsoring “Masterpiece Theater” rather than wasting its money on the NFL, and, as an aside, do Mike Ditka’s self-confessed problems correlate with the arc of his coaching career?
Popular culture often does offer a different perspective on where to look for real men. In “Something About Mary,” Tom Green’s high school football hero can’t get it up, while nebbishy Ben Stiller makes Cameron Diaz happy. And the drumbeat message of nearly every Woody Allen film is that beautiful women ultimately turn to short, whiny guys for ultimate fulfillment. Unfortunately, the message from popular culture is tainted by conflict-of-interest because it’s dweeby guys who make the television shows and films celebrating the sexual virtues of dweeby guys.
Nature, as always, offers crucial insights. Studies of chimp DNA have shown that while the alpha male and his aggressive pretenders are bluffing each other and fighting battles, junior and low-ranking males are regularly making assignations with the desirable females. Since there is evidence that female chimps choose the fathers of their offspring, and since reproduction is the only score that counts for evolutionary biologists, it’s game, set and match for Woody (can his name be a coincidence?) and his peers. So the question for football-worshipping guys has to be: what’s your girlfriend doing while you’re wrapped up in the big game?
The American Meteorological Society names Fire and Flood its book of the year for 2023, awarding it the Louis J Batton Author's Award.
"Eugene Linden wrote his first story on climate change, for Time magazine, in 1988; it was just the beginning of his investigative work, exploring all ramifications of this impending disaster. Fire and Flood represents his definitive case for the prosecution as to how and why we have arrived at our current dire pass, closing with his argument that the same forces that have confused the public’s mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with astonishing speed, as long-term risks have become present-day realities and the cliff’s edge is now within view.
Starting with the 1980s, Linden tells the story, decade by decade, by looking at four clocks that move at different speeds: the reality of climate change itself; the scientific consensus about it, which always lags reality; public opinion and political will, which lag farther still; and, arguably, most importantly, business and finance. Reality marches on at its own pace, but the public will and even the science are downstream from the money, and Fire and Flood shows how devilishly effective monied climate-change deniers have been at slowing and even reversing the progress of our collective awakening. When a threat means certain but future disaster, but addressing it means losing present-tense profit, capitalism's response has been sadly predictable.
Now, however, the seasons of fire and flood have crossed the threshold into plain view. Linden focuses on the insurance industry as one loud canary in the coal mine: fire and flood zones in Florida and California, among other regions, are now seeing what many call climate redlining. The whole system is teetering on the brink, and the odds of another housing collapse, for starters, are much higher than most people understand. There is a path back from the cliff, but we must pick up the pace. Fire and Flood shows us why, and how." From Catalog Copy
