Isabel Archer

Cliffs Notes As Poetry

Shakespeare into contemporary English: A project I find surprisingly useful. The ability to read Shakespeare fast, I think, makes the plays easier to remember; it's easy for a text to slip away when you always have to think about what the words mean. It's not a replacement, of course, but it's a useful reminder that any translation is just a rough summary of the original for ease of comprehension, at the expense of some of the poetry and nuance; it's always easier to read a translation of a 19th-century Russian novel than it is to read something in English from the same period.

Questions Without Answers

A dispatch from Phil Nugent on Lost, which I've never watched.

The thing is, while I've stuck with it, for most of its run, I sort of regarded it as a shuck. By which I mean that, not only did I believe that it would never resolve itself in any satisfying or meaningful way, but that I didn't think it was about anything except the effort to keep all those balls in the air. The balls themselves were fancy and colorful enough to keep me amused, and I kept tuning in for that. And also, I figured that there would come a point when the balls would hit the ground and smash apart in a spectacular fashion.

I am a very naive television viewer, simply because I don't watch all that much of it, so I tend to be surprised whenever a show fails to resolve the puzzles and mysteries it has dragged out for multiple seasons. Battlestar Galactica was my latest disappointment in this regard. To make money, TV shows often create an illusion of coherence that fades away around the same time viewers start losing interest.

More on the Climate

Here, for easy reference, is NASA Goddard's data on global temperature trends in 2008. That year was the coolest since 2000, but the ninth-warmest year since measurements started. An accompanying map shows most parts of the world were warmer than in a 1951-80 base period, the arctic latitudes exceedingly so. The east and west U.S. coasts were slightly warmer, while temperatures in the interior were a little colder.

If I'm reading it correctly, one of the reasons for a relatively cool year was a La Niña pattern in the first half of 2008. It looks like this followed a moderate El Niño in the early 2000s, which came after another La Niña in the late 90s, which in turn was preceded by the historic El Niño in 1997-98. The bottom line: "Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance."

Week In Review

Here's our story, as thorough as we can make it, about the House passage of the most important energy legislation in at least 19 years, and the first political attempt in this country to address global warming. Also the lead-up to the vote (Obama lobbying at the White House luau) and my colleagues on Pelosi behind the scenes.

I am not excited to start covering the Senate.

Briefly Spoken

Welcome to summer: Our local farmer's market has cherries, blueberries and raspberries now, three simple ways to make me happy. And peaches. But I've always been ambivalent about peaches.

-- The House climate change bill will not go to a floor vote at least until after the July 4 recess, after there had been some talk about bringing it up this week. The primary obstacle is Collin Peterson (D-Minn), chairman of the Agriculture Committee, who doesn't think the farmers are getting a fair deal. Negotiations between Peterson, Henry Waxman and Tom Vilsack continue at all hours.

-- From Matt Yglesias a couple weeks ago, a spooky early 90s news report on "Internet."

Tea Pick: Gyokuro

I was lucky to run across this at Alice's Tea Cup on Manhattan's Upper West Side, one of those rare establishments that embraces what I like to call the grotto theory of dining. (Another is a Lord of the Rings-themed cafe I once visited in Zagreb, in which one of the rooms was bright like a hobbit hole and the other was decked out like a cave in Mordor.) Everything in the restaurant has something to do with Alice in Wonderland: The quotes on the walls, picture books beneath glass on the tables, scones made from wonderful things like pumpkins, flowers on the teacups. It's a bit much, but it would a great place for a birthday party. Furthermore, it is a great place to drink Gyokuro, a Japanese tea that is known for being expensive, but here costs no more than the other selections on their excellent list. It is a variety of Sencha that is light and smooth and tastes rare and refined.

Muddled Water

A wedding this weekend on the Potomac -- a calm section above Great Falls.

The water was so high that ducks alighted in puddles on the lawns. 

I'll note in passing that the grounds were luxurious, especially by the standards of a government-run park; one could find a golf course, cabins with flat-screen TVs, and a water park with a Rube Goldberg contraption to pour a bucket of water over the kids, all courtesy of the Northern Virginia Regional Parks Authority. Next to the cabin phones were directories for the wine country of the Washington, DC area, which I have to admit I've never visited.

Life In Dungeons

Metro trains often run 20 minutes apart in the late evenings, even though, according to this blogger, they wouldn't have to if federal subsidies had increased with inflation. I have been astounded ever since I moved to this city that people consider a 20-minute wait time acceptable, even when they might have to transfer and wait again. In my world, rail transportation that takes more than 10 minutes to arrive is not a subway; it's a train. (And by this I mean that it might as well have all the ceremonial inconveniences one expects from a train: Tickets, waiting rooms, talking to a man in a funny hat. The Baltimore light rail system is charming, or it was for me the couple of times I tried it; it has the feel of an old-world streetcar, the way it creaks up the hill from the harbor every half an hour, but it would be absurd to rely on it for a daily commute or errands.)

Greater Greater Washington puts it this way:

As Metrorail continues to rack up ridership gains, especially during off-peak periods, WMATA has continued to operate off-peak headways more appropriate for a sleepy, commuter-only city.

The word "sleepy" is perfect. If we want to be taken seriously as a city, we deserve an affordable way to promptly get where we're going.

Manhattanhenge

Interesting photo of this pre-summer phenomenon.

Front-Row Seats

We spent a weekend in the big city.

Mayor Bloomberg recently closed off a Midtown section of Broadway to traffic. The concept was intriguing: A pedestrian shopping district! Just like in Europe! However, they chose to set it up like a park or maybe an outdoor concert, with lawn chairs strewn all over Times Square for visitors to sit in as they take in the urban spectacle.

Or in other words, it's a wide avenue for tourists, much like the National Mall in Washington. This works for me, but it would be nice to see them close off a few narrow streets as well. D.C. could stand for some pedestrian zones of its own: My top candidate has always been Georgetown, where traffic never moves anyway.

On a related note, D.C. was named the sixth "best walking city" in the country, with the usual suspects at the top.