I don't think that power even makes sense. That's what I don't think.

You just blew ben's mind.

Okay, so, you arrive in the future having experienced the part you fastforwarded through? Or are you then experiencing things in some sort of meta way, like in time travel?

Wouldn't the power just be the same as the power to black out for ten minutes? Otherwise, you'd be disappearing in the middle of boring conversations and meetings, popping in and out of the very air as the PowerPoint clicked away or someone told you about her best friend's boyfriend's sister's new baby etc., etc., etc. People might notice.

You arrive in the future having experienced the part that you fast forwarded through. So I would have walked home, and would have all of the knowledge and experience of having walked home and would have transported all of my groceries, but would not have fully experienced the emotion and pain of that time. Advancing the plot without really experiencing it, if you will.

"My dissertation! How fully revised it now is!"

Now I'm picturing Becks as Adam Sandler. It's not a happy thing.

I wished for this endlessly during high school - gym class, foreign language exams, stuff like that. Less so afterwards, though there were times in college when I wished that some all-nighter or other could be over. Particularly during the years when I was averaging 1.5 all-nighters a week doing problem sets.

6 - What? Was this an Adam Sandler film?

I suspect that Becks really needs the power of summoning taxis out of the air.

But you couldn't actually black out, because you would need to respond to the situation. The problem is that you have to conceive of your relation to yourself in a spectatorial way, completely detached from your actual mental and physical life—the way someone watching a movie is from the characters in the movie. But that is not at all how things are. (The alternative is that there is no subjective difference at all, which is obviously dissatisfying.)

You'll have and use that power when you get older and you'll not be happy about it. IMX even bad and boring shit happens much faster than it used to. That last is really scary.

I pronounce this superpower philosophically unsound.

The problem is that you have to conceive of your relation to yourself in a spectatorial way, completely detached from your actual mental and physical life--the way someone watching a movie is from the characters in the movie. But that is not at all how things are.

This is the problem, of course, but how many things there are that one enjoys having done much more than one enjoys actually doing.

Better to think of it as a Parfit-like problem -- e.g., whether it would make a difference to the experience if you knew you would have no memory of it.

8: Yeah. With special bonus appearance by The Hoff.

8: That film would have been unwatchable - but it was Walkenized!
I think your imaginary version is probably a lot better, Becks.

Huh, I genuinely thought the Sandler movie was somehow related to this (vaguely unsafe for work).

The problem is that if this power existed, 100% of the smart people in the world would become lawyers.

15: I don't remember that at all! I must have been chewing off my own arm when that happened.

whether it would make a difference to the experience if you knew you would have no memory of it.

But if you had the ability to do that, how could you ever know that it worked?

The superhero accessory that it would be better not to have is the invisible car.

Contrariwise, if you have the full memory of the experience, does this really differ in any significant way from having the experience? It feels as if it should, but the difference is only meaningful to a very transient you. Is February you with only memories of January actually any differently situated from February you who genuinely experienced it?

The superpower I would like to have is to live maybe in Florida somewhere, like the Keys maybe.

The snow is insane up here, even for here.

If I have the full memory of the experience of killing someone, it sure makes a difference whether the memory is in or accurate.

(22 is obviously neither a sophisticated nor a new question. I'm just sayin'.)

24: But in the proposed scenario, it is accurate, so that consideration is immaterial.

17: That would have been so much better.

But if you had the ability to do that, how could you ever know that it worked?

You would just catch the faster-paced background music dying away.

What do you know from cold? I woke up this morning experiencing a mild earthquake. Turns out it was just the icy winds shaking my fucking apartment. I then went out on to my deck to smoke. In sandals, of course, because I am hardcore.

12: I don't see any... philosophy, at all, sir.

You can have the fast-forward power if I can have the rewind power.

You arrive in the future having experienced the part that you fast forwarded through. ... Advancing the plot without really experiencing it, if you will.

How would you make decisions, take actions, make new memories, reason from the evidence of your senses ("That woman's shoes are awfully loud." "Has someone cut the soccer field grass again?" "I would like a Snickers.")? That sounds like a neurological disorder the chronicle of which would earn Oliver Sacks the pocket money of a great many upper middle class twits, or an emotional-mental dynamic comparable to that of an autistic serial killer, if such a beast could exist.

whether it would make a difference to the experience if you knew you would have no memory of it.

But if you had no memory of it, how could it qualify as an "experience"? Defining "experience" in terms of some sort of accumulated something or other from the past, which extends into and sheds light on the present, in order to help guide future something or others, and so on and so forth...

The rewind power has the same sort philosophical problems that ben pointed out in the FF power. What exactly happens to you from an outside perspective while you are rewinding to that sex scene and living it again? Does nothing happen in the present moment because all the rewinding exists in the past when the original events happened? Or is it like splicing a copy of the past events into your timeline again later on? Or maybe its just like having a Funes-like memory?

Today I took PK to the park wearing a tank top and hoodie. I took a nap in the sun while he played on the playground until a young friend of ours showed up on his skateboard sans shoes. Then we hung out for a while until it was time to come home and make dinner.

while you are rewinding to that sex scene and living it again?

Oh, fuck that shit. I want the rewind power so I can do shit over again without screwing it up. I promise to use it responsibly.

Oh, I forgot that I also found a ton of mint growing by the playground, picked some, and brought it home to make mojitos. PK found a windfall lemon on the walk, which we made lemonade with when we got back.

That works even less well.

oh no, B, changing the past is a totally different superpower, with a whole different set of philosophical problems.

The snow is fierce here, and I am going to be up all night grading. Final grades are due noon tomorrow and I am swimming in unmarked papers.

When God gets to have this superpower he can do the Omphalos thing (aka "last Thursdayism").

35: I'm starting to hate you again. Can you talk about some part of your life that is less idyllic?

Unquestionably, the best philosophically/physically confusing power is the ability to relive past episodes with all of the knowledge and memories of your present self.

No snow here. Better weather for getting a Christmas tree than SoCal, however.

Oliver Sacks the pocket money of a great many upper middle class twits

Come on, Flippanter. Oliver Sacks is awesome. You keep going on like this, and someday someone's going to mock your big middlebrow pleasure and you will cry, sir.

Furthermore, would your brain even be able to comprehend the experience of FF'd or RW'd time? Wouldn't the acceleration take you orthogonally from the arrow to which we are accustomed? Better put, to which we are tied, ever slipping forward at a common rate? Aren't deja vu, vertigo and similar feelings of disorientation nauseating and frightening? Wouldn't it sooner or later drive you mad to be the only person skipping across the clockface like a flat stone?

Bruce Willis
Some Starlet You'll Never See Again
The Last Time Traveler Is ... Too Late
Christmas 2008.
Theaters Everywhere.

39: Um, I cleaned up the house (except for vacuuming) and my feet hurt?

41: Au contraire. We went out to get a tree a couple days ago after dark, and it was perfectly comfortable and we took all the time we needed.

I am thinking, though, that I might start pushing for a Christmas palm tree at some point. The fir, though nice and all, just seems a little unseasonal.

OTOH, after cleaning I went out on the back porch, still in tank and hoodie, and had a smoke while reading the New Yorker and drinking a mojito.

The election of 2000 is conclusive proof that time travel will never ever be possible.

I always wished for the ability to freeze time, strolling around freely in the frozen instant while the rest of the world just sat there in place. Taking as long and leisurely a break as I wanted from reality. (This tells you a lot about me -- as someone once said, I'm an opiate guy at heart). I might also use the opportunity to rifle through peoples things.

Of course, the physics of this are just impossible. For starters, if nothing at all moved my surroundings would be at absolute zero relative to me, correct? Becks is more realistic, I can imagine a drug that would change experience as she wishes. That stuff they give you before you have your wisdom teeth out kind of fast-forwards things, although you have no memories.

Oh, here you go, Rob: I'm getting sick of Xmas music.

Come on, Flippanter. Oliver Sacks is awesome. You keep going on like this, and someday someone's going to mock your big middlebrow pleasure and you will cry, sir.

We all have our little weaknesses, and mine is assuaging my fear of death by mocking the transparent strategies of the bourgeoisie, who I am convinced read the Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande stuff in the NYer because they secretly believe that Alzheimer's, heart disease and medical malpractice can't get you if you learn and utter their secret names. Don't judge me.

Also, anybody who mocks Batman has to deal with Time Warner.

Et voila! Bye-bye Louis Armstrong, hello Beach Boys!

With so much so wrong in the universe, Doc, at least it's a good thing that you're in SoCal where you like the weather, and I'm not ('cause I don't).

read the Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande stuff in the NYer because they secretly believe that Alzheimer's, heart disease and medical malpractice can't get you if you learn and utter their secret names.

Lalalalalala I am not listening to you.

51: What's not to like? Did you know that the roses are still blooming here?

53 -- The thing I don't like about DC is that we don't get enough snow.

Ick. Snow's pretty to look at but shitty to live with. Plus, here in nirvana, you can always *go to* the snow if you really want to.

Then you can go home.

Snow is a reminder that the world is real.

Lalalalalala I am not listening to you.

You should quit smoking, too.

Who needs super powers? It sounds like this might do the trick. Someone with a higher risk tolerance might be able to provide additional insight.

55: One of my enduring memories of my brief sojourn in SoCal was literally being next to a car at a stop light with a surfboard strapped to the roof while we had skis on ours.

47: That's a whole nother book

You should quit smoking, too.

Yeah, thanks. I promised PK I'd do it by my birthday. I am regretting that promise daily.

55 -- I'd be happy if everyone who doesn't like living in snow moved where it wasn't. Or where I wasn't. I complain about DC, but we get snow twice or three times a year. At which point everyone forgets how to drive. Which I wouldn't mind, if they'd just get out of the goddam way.

Really, while there might be enough money someone could pay to get me to live in SoCal, it's way less than it would take to get me to live in Minneapolis or Cleveland. Nirvana is a state of mind.

I'm typically as relentlessly highbrow as Flippanter, and by-and-large share his views, but that last Atul Gawande, about the checklists in ICUs, and why they're not going to be everywhere anytime soon, was pretty damn good.

59: And is that not completely, utterly, awesome?

Of course, the physics of this are just impossible. For starters, if nothing at all moved my surroundings would be at absolute zero relative to me, correct?

Pff. Tell that to Hiro Nakamura.

59: That makes me realize...I don't think I've ever seen a surfboard in real life.

So many worlds left to conquer!

I like the snow, I like the rain. I don't like the sheets of ice on the street or anything else, and I don't like when the snow and rain are combined with wind.

The thing I don't like about DC is that we don't get enough snow.

I grew up in upstate NY, lived near the Great Lakes most of my life, and I used to talk bullshit smack like this all the time. Then I got the chance to live in California and realized winter is neither necessary nor desirable. Human beings were not meant to live in the winter. Snow is readily available in the high mountains should one wish to enjoy it for a weekend or so. It was a real epiphany, and I look back on my earlier self with sympathy and a touch of pity.

Nothing beats sitting in paradise, nurturing a lung tumor.

I shoveled a lot of snow today. The ground was warm, though, and my aluminum shovel wouldn't scour; I must have knocked it off every scoopful. I know it's early in the year but I don't remember it being like this so much before.

62: Ah, well, people everywhere complain about how everyone else doesn't know how to drive. You can't escape that.

I like Minneapolis a lot, actually. But damn, the winters bite.

67 -- I lived in California for 7 years, all in, and, as noted, the amount of money it would take to get me back there has yet to be calculated.

66: Well you must have been loving the last couple of days.

64,67: It really is a much more civilized way to live. It's just that 23 bajillion other people shared that view...

61: Good luck.

Nothing beats sitting in paradise, nurturing a lung tumor.

Oh, please. I smoke like five cigarettes a day. My odds of getting lung cancer are infinitesimal. *Maybe* I'm doing a little damage to my heart and mildly increasing my risk of getting pneumonia.

It's just that 23 bajillion other people shared that view...

Also good. I'd way rather live in a crowded mild coast/desert than in a sparsely populated freezing-ass shithole.

I smoke like five cigarettes a day. My odds of getting lung cancer are infinitesimal. *Maybe* I'm doing a little damage to my heart and mildly increasing my risk of getting pneumonia.

One day, God willing, Michael Bloomberg will be president and people who say things like this will be rounded up into work camps for re-education given the help they so desperately need.

Not all of (Northern) California is crowded either. Although the real estate prices suck.

75 was admirably succinct and direct.

the amount of money it would take to get me back there has yet to be calculated

This thread may provide the opportunity to calculate it, then.

Again: puhleeze. I've done quite a bit of reading (and pinned down a couple docs) to find out this shit, man. I have my vices, but they're well-researched.

Ah, well, people everywhere complain about how everyone else doesn't know how to drive. You can't escape that.

Of course. I spend my energy cursing the people, while you'd curse the weather.

Northern California is gorgeous. I'd live there, too. Pretty much anywhere along the left coast, really.

I have my vices, but they're well-researched.

"I'm sure," he muttered, smirking like a cat with a belly full of pet birds.

I spend my energy cursing the people, while you'd curse the weather.

I'm gonna throw down and say that mine is the better path on this one, my friend.

78 -- The number is going to be pretty high. But if you're making a collection to make an offer, I'll hear you out. I'm biased, to be sure, but not insane (evidence in this thread notwithstanding).

82: See 83. Is not rationalizing one's own self-destructive habits a higher state of being than smugly condemning the self-destructive habits of others?

The snowy/icy-weather-in-a-hilly-area treat that I really have come to appreciate: having three 16-21 yr old drivers in the household.

"You want to drive around town to pick up 4 other friends and all go see I Am Legend in the middle of a wicked snow/sleet/freezing rain storm? Sure, why not? It's a once in a lifetime opportunity - here take the new car."

What would really be worth finding out is if Napi's figure for moving back to So. Cal is higher or lower than mine for moving back to So. Ontario. I bet it would be lower.

85: If you want good weather and California cuisine, you have to grant those of us in the slushy Northeast our moral superiority.

87 -- You're on!

To be clear, I lived in the BA, not SoCal.

This seems totally philosophical to me. You want the power to turn off consciousness temporarily -- to be a philsophical zombie. Seems pretty reasonable, and entirely useful. I think they're working on a pill for this, but there's a terrible side effect. The next morning, you wake up knowing what it's like to be a bat.

88: Yeah, the moral superiority of suffering is a big thing back east.

Whenever I go back to upstate NY in the winter, I'm shocked again at how *extreme* conditions are. I mean, driving in blizzard conditions with maybe ten feet of visibility, ice storms, windchills well below zero, on and on it goes. I took all that for granted when I was young.

To be clear, I lived in the BA, not SoCal.

What? And you didn't like it? You're clearly insane.

Re. the SoCal vs. SoOnt contest, you gotta remember that SoOnt literally made me suicidal.

How much do you wanna bet on this thing?

I promised PK I'd do it by my birthday. I am regretting that promise daily.

I asked my mom to quit smoking as a 7th birthday present for me, and she said she would, but didn't. I was quite mad at her for a while there.

If you want good weather and California cuisine, you have to grant those of us in the slushy Northeast our moral superiority.

No I don't.

I like the NNY whether when it becomes so extreme it is like an adventure to get where you need to go. At a certain point, the temperature gets so low it is silly. Minus 20 without the wind chill! HAHAHA! LOL!

Human beings were not meant to live in the winter.

Nonsense. At the height of the July heat waves, I dream of living at the Penguin House at the Central Park Zoo. I hate the sun, and the feeling is mutual. My mother has to wear this prescription-only sunhat, ever since she got skin cancer (and she was born and raised in Canada! hardly the tropics) and had to have this thing removed from her nose.

I'd rather go trudging through the tundra, and feel the cold wind whip right through me, than watch my skin turn red like a boiled lobster in the hot sun.

93: Gee, thanks.

I promised him I'd quit when we moved here and didn't. And yeah, he was mad about it. Not too long ago he pointed out that I "never keep my promises," which, while not strictly true, is *sort of* true--I have a bad habit of saying "sure, we'll go to the beach this weekend, I promise" and then we don't. So I've been trying to be a lot better about that.

And yeah, I'm well aware that if I fuck up this quitting smoking thing I'll scar him for life. But I'm also forming plans to sekritly smoke just once or twice a day after he's in bed, maybe.....

back after a while.

PK found a windfall lemon on the walk

That just never occured to me, a windfall lemon.

OTOH, after cleaning I went out on the back porch, still in tank and hoodie, and had a smoke while reading the New Yorker and drinking a mojito.

Ok, the hell with it, I'm going to do that too.

None of this is to be taken as permission for any of you to hassle me about smoking at DCon, however.

I think that your body learns to deal with very cold weather if it experiences it enough times. You don't learn to endure cold, you learn to successfully fight it off.

On a cold, sunny, snowy day, I feel especially cheerful and energetic. I never have any problem unless it's below ten degrees or if there's a wind.

97: Why does he care one way or the other? Hasn't he read the literature?

"Keeping promises" is an imposition of the patriarchy.

We used to pick up windfall lemons every day on the walk home from his school last year. There's a house a couple blocks away that has like three or four lemon trees along the side, and while I wouldn't let PK go onto their lawn to get any, I figure any lemons on the sidewalk or parking strip are fair game.

It has been spitting icy rain in high winds in NYC for a fucking week straight, at least for part of every day, and I just want to curse God and die. If the wind and spitty shit would stop, I would be happy, cold though it may be.

I'm in Wisconsin! Where it is cold.

101: Because his dumb-ass school's dumb-ass anti-drug program refuses nuance, that's why.

Also because I am a conscientious parent who, despite my enjoyment of ye MCDs, has explained to PK that nicotine is addictive, that smoking can cause health problems, and that it's polluting.

92 -- God's own truth, it would take a guaranteed annual income into 7 figures to get me to move to SoCal. Thankfully, I'm not worth that, so it doesn't come up.

Tell me you wouldn't move to Toronto for 800k Canadian, and you can call yourself the winner.

Wind makes an enormous difference. I dislike trudging through the packed-down slippery snow, as well.

I think that your body learns to deal with very cold weather if it experiences it enough times.

Stuff and deluded nonsense. Your brain must be half frozen.

Wisconsin natives drink more than the natives of any other state, and they are also leaders in cannibalism. Participate in the local culture, Heeb.

they are also leaders in cannibalism. Participate in the local culture, Heeb.

I am! I'm chewing on a hang-nail.

Stuff and deluded nonsense. Your brain must be half frozen.

'Streuth, though. There's even a word for it.

Oh, please. I smoke like five cigarettes a day. My odds of getting lung cancer are infinitesimal.

If by "infinitesimal" you mean "at a little less than half the basline risk rate of heavy smokers," then yes, you're odds are infinitesimal.

Human beings were not meant to live in the winter.

Nonsense.

Well, OK, maybe it's just this human being.

Also, extremes of humidity ruin warmth...yet another great thing about Cali is that it does not have extremes of humidity.

But now we're just talking about the weather. How lame is that?

Your. Duh. I am illiterate. But not innumerate.

People from Stockton don't learn, B. Probably because of the glue.

107--The only way I'd do that is if I had a job that paid that kind of money and yet didn't expect me to actually show up half the year, so that I could spend winters somewhere else. Seriously, man, I do not want to be planning my own death again any time soon.

105, 110: This is where I pause to contemplate the fact that my father grew up in central Wisconsin without benefit of an indoor toilet.

117: Actually probably not even then. Toronto summers? Yuck. Plus, really, Toronto's not a bad city, but it's pretty fucking ugly. I think I miss my friends there, but other than that, no way.

I'm totally with B on the suicidally depressing relentless gray low clausterphobic clouds and dismal brown-to-gray spectrum of the environment for seven months a year of, in my case, Michigan.

Also, extremes of humidity ruin warmth.

Only in one direction.

Following up on B's depression, it was my experience that lack of sunlight had a very negative effect on my emotions. Of course, being a professor when you don't like the job is also really depressing (been there too).

Because his dumb-ass school's dumb-ass anti-drug program refuses nuance, that's why.

With nicotine, they should...it's incredibly addictive. Even if 5 cigs per day is OK, few people can stick at that level.

Like Emerson, I've divided my time between bone-crunchingly cold winters and mild but incessantly rainy "winters," and at the moment I'd opt for the former. Sun + snow = even more sun! Anyway, remember that it's never too cold; you're just not dressed warmly enough.

Cold-weather tip: if there's a chance you're going to have to take a crap in an outhouse in 40-below weather, a union suit is not the ideal undergarment.

100 is a real effect. I was strolling down the street earlier today in a t-shirt and a light jacket, explaining to my brother how it couldn't be anything less than forty, while he and his cell insisted it was 20 and sleeting.

118: OMG, I would seriously die of an impacted bowel or something.

One thing I miss about Cleveland, unbearable long cold windy winters aside, was the spring. Spring in Cleveland was truly gorgeous and made me giddy. NYC springs are pretty intoxicating, too, though.

As much as I hate the unchanging awful gray depression of winter, it's almost worth it when you emerge in a jacket for the first time each year and the air is reeking of blossoming trees. I am a sucker for it and can barely sleep all spring long.

You people are crazy. I went to school in upstate New York for four years and loved every minute of it (weather-wise, at least).

Totally pwned and outdone by 120, which was much more eloquent and expressive.

After I got to Cali I realized that if I had grown up in a sunnier place my entire self-image and world view would have been subtly different.

It took me a long time to realize I hate spring. It's never ever like the calendars. It's just like mud getting everywhere.

102: A promise-keeping animal is an animal who will insist on his patriarchal prerogatives. Otherwise, why bother with the Law? and party on, dudes!

Nowadays, it looks to me like some young women are trying to get around this problem by just partying on like dudes...I'm pretty sure this won't really work, but I can't pretend to have a better solution.

With nicotine, they should...it's incredibly addictive. Even if 5 cigs per day is OK, few people can stick at that level.

No, they should tell kids that. Which is what I've told PK, and which is certainly a better approach than "just say no!"

Jesus, you're insane. INSANE. You don't deserve Portland.

124: I realize that this is, in fact, true; one gets used to weather. When I lived there anything above the freezing point seemed "warm." Here, I just put the fire on about twenty minutes ago because I was getting chilly. Nonetheless, it is simply not true that one can "get used" to negative celsius temperatures and evil, evil winds, to scraping windshields, to trudging across ice, or to slogging through muddy slush in March.

126 gets it right.

I love when it's cloudy outside. It makes me want to be productive. The sun makes me think "You loser, you should be outside doing something fun, except that you're not fun. This weather is for fun people." And it makes the inside of places look dingy when it shines in. It could be cloudy and drizzling for ten straight weeks and I wouldn't get depressed as long as there weren't any icy winds.

I also enjoyed winter a lot more when I didn't have my own sidewalk or snow-buried car (that is, between living at home and post-college life).

126, 129: Winter in arid environments = spring in temperate ones. The dry, hot season ends and everything turns green and blooms.

It's true that there is less sense of ecstatic liberation than there is in places with long horrible winters though.

Does cannibalism need leaders, as such? Nowadays isn't it sort of a private passion?

Nonetheless, it is simply not true that one can "get used" to negative celsius temperatures and evil, evil winds, to scraping windshields, to trudging across ice, or to slogging through muddy slush in March.

And yet, somehow, Canada is inhabited year-round.

My brothers ran barefoot around the house sometimes on New Years Eve. The temperature was +20 F or less.

This was obviously a stunt on a dare, not a routine behavior, but there were no ill effects. I once went outside in my shirtsleeves for five minutes at 20 below and no wind. Of course, I'd been standing behind a hot stove for 2 hours (McDonald's cook! 1968!) No feeling of being cold, but a perception that it was cold out there.

My coworkers pretended to lock me out as a joke, and that was annoying.

I didn't say anything about the summers here, B, because we're not supposed to advertise. It attracts Californians.

126: The exciting weather was the only thing I liked about Cleveland (Akron-Canton, actually). Sheet lightning! Snow squalls! Every commute was an adventure.

I love when it's cloudy outside. It makes me want to be productive. The sun makes me think "You loser, you should be outside doing something fun, except that you're not fun. This weather is for fun people." And it makes the inside of places look dingy when it shines in.

This is a matter of anchor-points. We were recruiting a prof from Midwest Cloudy Depressionville and he asked "How does anyone get any work done here in Sunny State?" To which the answer is, with 330 days of sunshine a year, you don't worry about missing one today, because there will likely be another one along tomorrow."

From an article on Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD):

In about 1/10th of cases, annual relapse occurs in the summer rather than winter, possibly in response to high heat and humidity. During that period, the depression is more likely to be characterized by insomnia, decreased appetite, weight loss, and agitation or anxiety. Patients with such "reverse SAD" often find relief with summer trips to cooler climates in the north.

In still fewer cases, a patient may experience both winter and summer depressions, while feeling fine each fall and spring, around the equinoxes.

I'm with Jesus on Portland weather. 5 months of gloom, always damp, often windy, and about 40 degrees F most of the time. A damp windy 40 degrees is much colder than a dry windless 20 degrees.

140 - but the twentieth consecutive sunny day is just as annoying as the first.

The solstices tend to be the major points of my yearlong mood swings. Everything after the summer solstice is downhill. I sleep later and later, I get in a worse and worse funk, and then, at my lowest point, the winter solstice happens and I get gradually more chipper again. Seriously, it's almost instantaneous. I'm so glad it's coming soon, because I am really low.

138: You forget, I was fortunate enough to live in Seattle for ten blissful years.

Let's face it, people who get suicidally depressed during cold winters lack inner resources. They're sort of like played out mind, cutover land, or people with negative bank balances. It's a Darwinian culling process.

"played out mines"

140 - but the twentieth consecutive sunny day is just as annoying as the first.

Maybe for you, bub.

Thanks, Emerson. That feels good to hear.

I'm not suicidal, though. Just bored and tired.

Seriously, it's almost instantaneous. I'm so glad it's coming soon, because I am really low.

Consider moving closer to the equator.

What Emerson said in 146. He (almost) always speaks truth to power.

People that delusionally romanticize torturous suicidally gray winters often are mentally trapped like the saps in Plato's cave and are deserving of indulgent smirks from we who know better. People like Emerson.

He (almost) always speaks truth to power.

To grad students, anyway.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a played out mine! They can be picturesque, as long as you ignore the poisonous water seeping out from them to kill everything within miles. They're the avant-garde John Galts of the the physical world, defying the shallow norms of the mediocrities and mass men.

with 330 days of sunshine a year, you don't worry about missing one today, because there will likely be another one along tomorrow

So true. I've never really understood the whole "sunny days = need to go outside and do fun things" attitude. Sunny days are the norm; it's cloudy, rainy or (especially) snowy days that are different and exciting.

And no, four years in upstate New York did not disabuse me of this notion.

People that delusionally romanticize torturous suicidally gray winters often are mentally trapped like the saps in Plato's cave and are deserving of indulgent smirks from we who know better.

Isn't it hard to smirk when you're suicidal?

Also, if I could fast-forward, I would have surely turned 30 a long time back and not 15 minutes ago.

it's cloudy, rainy or (especially) snowy days that are different and exciting.

My Hibernian progenitors find it absurd and sort of perverse that my daughter is outrageously excited whenever it rains, and wants to run around outside and splash around.

Woo, happy birthday Becks!

Happy birthday, Becks!

153: Scorn not his simplicity. He runs a damn good seminar, after all.

Also, if I could fast-forward, I would have surely turned 30 a long time back and not 15 minutes ago.

You're still 29 here.

Frankly I thought you were like 23 or something.

Happy birthday!!

Isn't it hard to smirk when you're suicidal?

It was, it was. Fortunately I now live in the bear-blasting heat.

Happy birthday, Beckos!

My Hibernian progenitors find it absurd and sort of perverse that my daughter is outrageously excited whenever it rains

I'm sure mine feel the same way when I get like this.

No, no. The grey winters are in Oregon. Minnesota has bright winters, when it snows anyway.

The Scandinavian problem isn't cold winters, it's the lack of winter daylight as far north as they are. Stockholm is farther north than edmonton and almost as far north as Anchorage (59 vs. 61 degrees N).

Happy Birthday!

I've been told by hearty Alaskans that the way to deal with brutal winters is to not try to fight or avoid the weather, but to find ways to enjoy it. So they snowshoe and cross-country ski and do that other outside stuff. Obviously, this doesn't work if you're a lazy-ass.

Happy Birthday, Becks.

Obviously, this doesn't work if you're a lazy-ass.

Why is so much of life bound by this restriction? Why?

When my mother came to OR from MN she complained about the winter cold. True story. In MN we have something called central heat, and it isn't damp there.

So they snowshoe and cross-country ski and do that other outside stuff drink.

Congrats, Becks! You have no idea how young you are!

172 -- Everyone who moves to NorCal has The Mark Twain Experience at some point or other.

144 must be nice, if only for the order of it and the expectation of relief.

Also, ice fishing isn't a joke. It's a very pleasant, contemplative way of getting away and spending your time. The ice houses can be made very cozy, and catching fish isn't necessary, though fish really are caught. You can also chat, drink, smoke dope, play cards, and so on. With special arrangements you could even have sex.

I really like marching around in the snow, but it's something we only get to do a few times a year here, since a blizzard that defeats city services is fairly uncommon. Those are fun days, when there are no cars that can get around and the streets are full of people on sleds and big boots on. January, usually.

With special arrangements you could even have sex.

But in that case you probably shouldn't eat the Walleye afterwards. It's not respectful.

I'll add my happy birthday wishes to the pile. 30? Better start cranking out some kids stat, woman.

insomnia, decreased appetite, weight loss, and agitation or anxiety

Yup. Had that once when I went to a conference in Vegas in fucking March. But agitation is WAY better than wanting to die.

Emerson, ya' hoser. Nobody wants to do the bold thing in an ice house.

Apo will serve as daddy! He's proven to make cute kids!

I'll be in DC at the end of the month!

173: A good friend was a doctor based in Fairbanks (mostly covered far outlying towns and areas). Her report of winter medicine:
1) chronic drinking issues,
2) acute drinking issues,
3) hideous chainsaw accidents,
4) hideous snowmobiling accidents

The last two usually in association with #2.

There is a legend that the very presence of a woman in an ice house will cause the ice to melt and send the ice house to the bottom. But during the Sixties people became shameless.

There is a legend that the very presence of a woman in an ice house will cause the ice to melt and send the ice house to the bottom. But during the Sixties people became shameless.

Also, the Mineshaft quote of the day: "I think we went too far with too much penis."

It's true, there's a lot of drinking; the people I happen to know are young, hearty and healthy non-drinking types with little kids. Like I say, it doesn't work if you're Irish.

Happy birthday, Miss Becks.

My brother and I used to do snow hikes at 2am, with like 5 minute breaks between joints. As it was just us and the plows, it was some serene shit.

Thanks, everyone! Except for:

30? Better start cranking out some kids stat, woman.

How did my mother get your number, Apo?

Happy birthday, Becks!

Heebie is the only sane person in this thread besides me.

Obviously, this doesn't work if you're a lazy-ass.

Racist. Tropical peoples are not lazy.

Vegas in fucking March

How is the weather in Vegas extreme in March? Is this supposed to evoke something in us?

As it was just us and the plows, it was some serene shit.

hee-hee. Squish, squish.

How did my mother get your number, Apo?

If I had a dollar for every time I've been asked this...

Like I say, it doesn't work if you're Irish.

[Sings] Hip-snap away, hip-snap away, hip-snap awayyy ...

"I think we went too far with too much penis."

I think we've all been there.

The weather in Vegas in march is warm but not hot. SUN SUN SUN. As opposed to places up north, where as Heebie's already described, it's gray muddy crap.

Only suicidally depressed people are sane. OK, fine. If that's sanity, I want none of it.

I just watched the Big Lebowski for the first time with my brother, his wife, and his tween daughters. One of the daughters absolutely loves the movie.

185: In the rural areas around Ithaca there are several bars on the main snowmobile routes.

In MN we have something called central heat, and it isn't damp there.

No, because the central heating--which you shouldn't need, since you're "used to" the cold, right?--sucks all the moisture out of the air and turns you into a dessicated corpse before your time.

In an interview the Coen brothers reported that their mother would tell them to go play outside when it was 20 below. Completely understandable to me. Northern women have ways of protecting their private space, and while having their guys freeze to death is not their goal, it's a risk they're willing to take. In the same way, women tend to be barred from icehouses because they want to have a place to sent the guys.

B. hates Canada even more than she hates Irish music. Which means she doubly hates Newfoundland, of course.

I don't want your maggotty fish
That's no good for winter
I can get as good as that
Down in BonavistaOn a hot dog. Or in an ice house.

Only suicidally depressed people are sane. OK, fine. If that's sanity, I want none of it.

Word. I'll take delusion any day.

the central heating--which you shouldn't need, since you're "used to" the cold, right?

If you were living in an unheated house in Eastern Ontario, I can finally understand the strange suicidal longings.

Personally, I get used to the cold after about a week of seeing my breath. In January, 20 Fahrenheit feels like what 40 Fahrenheit felt like in October.

But I never get used to the wind.

We also boil water on something called "a stove" to keep the air moist enough not to cause dehydration and coughs, but not moist enough to make everything clammy like it is in Oregon.

So John's idea of heaven is a place where women's maternal instincts are so deadened by the unremitting cold that they send their children out to die of hypothermia.

Or is it the crowded conditions that result from *no one wanting to fucking go outside because it's freezing* that lead them to "have ways of protecting their private space"? Hmmm?

I'm off to bed. The odds of my alarm going off at 6am are infinitesimal.

We also boil water on something called "a stove" to keep the air moist enough not to cause dehydration and coughs

Gosh, this just sounds more and more like heaven.

I should have been more clear. We learn to deal with the cold, which includes a.) central heating b.) boiling water on the stove c.) wearing warm clothes and d.) physiologically adapting to cold, so that you can have fun outside at 10 below.

The Fairbanks winter medical report sounds like Vermont, only more so, from what I remember of my mom's work. I also vaguely remember that about once a year some young lovers would succumb to CO poisoning while getting busy in a car during a snowstorm, when the car's tailpipe got covered up.

210: As opposed to not bothering with any of that crap, including not needing an entirely separate wardrobe of bulky expensive clothes. At least rain gear isn't a pain in the ass to clean and store.

I know several frostbite and freezing to death stories.

B. is not strong enough to be the mother of heros.

Going to the Russian Baths makes winter a lot more bearable than it deserves to be.

I'm out as well, and I have to get up at 6 to make a plane. You want me to call you, G?

I pray to god that my kid never has the opportunity to be a fucking hero.

Having to deal with the rain is much worse than having to deal with the cold, even cold and snow. I fucking hate rain. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, of course.

I kind of love it when it's oppressively hot. I like how everyone slows down and moves at a snail's pace. Everything will wait until you get there, there's no hurry. Whereas when it's oppressively cold, everyone hunkers down and scuttles from place to place, just to get there ASAP.

Heroes like the Coen brothers. Heroes like Prince. Heroes like Bob Dylan. Hard men, tested by fire and ice.

And also lady heroes like Judy Garland, Jane Russell, and Winona Ryder.

when it's oppressively cold, everyone hunkers down and scuttles from place to place, just to get there ASAP.

Exactly. And you never, ever relax for like six months at a time. Awful.

Salt Lake is pretty good on the weather front. Snowy winters, but dry air. The snow here is unbelievably dry and fluffy, and ski resorts are less than 10 miles away. Summers are hot but dry.

For me, it's a really good location vacation wise. Three places I like to go are all a day's drive or under from here. Mt. Lassen area of NorCal, Yellowstone, and Glacier.

I yield to no one in my love of both Bob Dylan and Prince, truly heroes in my book, but I'm not sure they're "hard men". Prince in particular.

I have no bulky special clothes. Layering can be done in Minnesota. I would get boots, headgear, and good gloves if I spent more time outside and if the weather got genuinely cold (the last 3 winters have been disappointing.

Did you not have a fireplace in Ontario, B?

if I spent more time outside

The holes in your story are beginning to show, John.

Heros like Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and all those comedians.

My hero is the woman whose office is across the hall and who is always practical, funny, optimistic, etc, and has two kids with cystic fibrosis.

224: We did, but it was a tiny coal-burning fireplace that had never been converted, and we couldn't afford to have the chimney cleaned, so we never used it. Also, the fucking walls had, I swear, never been insulated; they were incredibly cold to the touch in the winter. When we moved out, we repainted the bedroom, which involved stripping the wallpaper off first, and Mr. B. discovered a HOLE IN THE WALL underneath THE PAPER behind our fucking bed.

I fucking hated that place.

227: Oh my God.

The problem we've been having recently is not wintery enough, especially not snowy enough. But with the first big snowfall when I came back, I went out and walked for an hour in my tennis shoes. I was completely happy. If the weather had been colder than 20+ I would have needed boots, but it wasn't.

229: And on every level, she is such a deeply wonderful person.

227: Yeah, holy crap. Black humor girl says the woman must be tanked to the gills with happy pills.

228: That makes sense, then. My memories of frigid Northeast winters would be vastly different if we hadn't had fires pretty much every day through the winter. Plus, making out by the hearth on a cold winter night? Everything it's cracked up to be.

The problem we've been having recently is not wintery enough, especially not snowy enough.

Problem around the Rockies as well. I spent a couple weeks in the Grand Teton/Yellowstone area in August. I've never seen the rivers so low and warm. Water was so warm from the low levels that fishing was banned past 2pm.

As opposed to not bothering with any of that crap, including not needing an entirely separate wardrobe of bulky expensive clothes.

At least in colder climes, a) restaurants have double entry doors (like an airlock) and b) people know well enough not to FUCKING HOLD THE DOOR OPEN AND LET THE COLD AIR IN. These lessons have apparently not percolated through the country to the Bay Area.

Insulating houses is an important detail, like wearing some sort of shoe or boot in the snow.

making out by the hearth

Our fire was in the tiny dining room. Making out underneath the dining room table, not so much fun. Especially during the six month period when all the furniture we owned including the fridge and stove were shoved into the dining room and hall as we renovated the kitchen and living "room."

Anyway, it wasn't so much the house (although I will freely admit that after we painted it cheerful tropical colors and fixed the hole in the wall and the window frames so the windows would actually open and the sashes so that once open they wouldn't fall down and smash something and renovated the kitchen so it had actual counter space and the entire house was no longer pea-soup green with nicotine-stained condensation running down the walls in the winter, I realized that probably another winter there would be a LOT BETTER than the previous ones had been) as it was stuff like walking from my car to my office and having my eyeballs freeze, or driving to TO occasionally to actually *do stuff* and having the windshield crack from the cold and praying we wouldn't end up on the side of the road because of some sudden ice storm, or the endless salt and muck, or the fact that everything was always sort of gray and dirty.

Well, okay, actually the house probably really was a big part of it. That and the whole being really fucking poor the entire time thing.

a) restaurants have double entry doors (like an airlock)

Called a "vestibule," no?

All of this discussion of cold weather reminds me of a comment in Watership Down: "Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it."

B will appreciate that a Google search for "'watership down' 'cold weather'" led me here.

There's been at least a month less of ice on the lakes for the last 3 years or more, and it really bothers people and is materially damaging to tourism.

Called a "vestibule," no?

Quite possibly. My brain was so frozen by the constant blasts of cold air at lunch that I still haven't recovered, apparently.

Insulating houses is an important detail, like wearing some sort of shoe or boot in the snow.

Someone please tell the Canadians we bought our house from, please.

More importantly, have you ever seen one in the Bay Area? I sure as fuck haven't. Good thing it never gets cold here...

I have often thought that the very poor enjoyed winters here less than most of us did. Huddled over their steam grate in their cardboard house, or living in grad student housing like B, I'm sure that they suffered bitterly.

All of this discussion of cold weather reminds me of a comment in Watership Down: "Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it."

That sounds right.

I wouldn't enjoy living here in the winter if I had to actually sleep in below-50-degree temperatures every night. I guess I'd get used to it, but I would wish every day for spring to come instead of just being happy when it does.

Last winter was bad enough. I wish they could tear down every pre-1910 rental building in this city and replace it with one with a reasonable amount of insulation. Especially when it was originally a single house but now is being rented as individual floors and there is no insulation between stories and you RENT THE SECOND FLOOR but DON'T RENT THE FIRST FLOOR and therefore DON'T HEAT THE FIRST FLOOR OH GOD WHAT A WASTE OF FOSSIL FUEL.

Nothing like cold winters to thin the ranks of the homeless.

239 is exactly true, as Emerson's "central heating" and Jesus's "fires every day" attest.

Our Canadian hardiness is "proof against" our often-harsh climate.

Urgh. You see what I mean about those people?

More importantly, have you ever seen one in the Bay Area?

There's one between the main hallway and the interior of the locker rooms where I swim. Not everyone has figured out that holding the door open for people for an extended period of time rather defeats the purpose. But to answer seriously, no, I don't think I have.

I also think it's been damn cold here, but I realize we're not going to get any sympathy for the fact that it's dipped into the thirties.

I'm not sure they're "hard men". Prince in particular.

Basketball court evidence says otherwise.

239 is exactly true, as Emerson's "central heating" and Jesus's "fires every day" attest.

It's not normal to have lots of people living in disaster-prone and drought-ready places, either. The ability to live a stable lifestyle in the southwestern US is only possible during this blip of history.

I wasn't living in grad student housing. I was faculty. I owned that fucking place.

The ability to live a stable lifestyle in the southwestern US is only possible during this blip of history.

The southwestern US has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years.

I also think it's been damn cold here, but I realize we're not going to get any sympathy for the fact that it's dipped into the thirties.

Except maybe from B. She understands.

250: Tell that to the Chumash, Navajo, Apache, Hopi, etc.

Though yes, admittedly, the water situation in So Cal is pretty dire and unnatural blah blah. Nonetheless, it is a much more pleasant place to live than a freezing-ass shithole.

252, I know, but it's being mined right now, for the sake of our advanced comforts.

Nothing like cold winters to thin the ranks of the homeless.

Not long after I moved out here, the owner of a café in Burlington, VT, caused a stir by offering homeless people one-way tickets to Portland. You certainly couldn't blame them for taking him up on it.

Weren't you going to bed, Ned, or did that apply only in the other thread?

I'm down here in more Southern California than B, and I'm cold. Our housing stock isn't built to trap heat (although mine does a pretty good job in the summer) and we have these wifty wall heaters that spend money on gas but don't change the temperature if you're more than four feet away from them. Granted, I've completely lost all sense of weather suffering since I moved here in the middle late nineties, but homes are better heated in places where it gets really cold, and when it hits the forties, it's not comfortable to be in a home that won't properly heat.

Weren't you going to bed, Ned, or did that apply only in the other thread?

I tried to go to bed hungry, but was too hungry. Now I can go to bed.

253: I do. People holding open doors when it's cold out is truly annoying.

I know, but it's being mined right now, for the sake of our advanced comforts.

This doesn't seem relevant to what you were saying before. In any case, the fact that mining is the primary industry in much of the southwest has very little to do with how possible it is to "live a stable lifestyle" here. The mines are quite far from the river valleys where most people live.

There are people in Canada who sell uninsulated houses to Californians. Canadians find it hilarious.

People holding open doors when it's cold out is truly annoying.

You know what else is annoying? Roommates who continually open the windows when it's cold out. Hello people! That lets in cold air!

Ha ha, John. No, she was a batshit crazy old lady hermit who was dying of emphysema, and it was the only fucking house we could afford.

The link in 58 is quite good. A friend tried Ketamine for a psych lab experiment. While he was dosed, they had him do word games. The first word game was "How many words can you name that start with the letter 'S'?" He could name six.

Continuously but very thinly populated, with an apparent big die-off or migration out of the Anasazi around 1300 AD.

ah, so now I understand --- B doesn't hate Canada, B hates S. Ontario.

That makes more sense.

Tell you the truth though B, out of your left coast locations, I'd trade SoCal for Seattle, easy. Or Vancouver, even better (same weather, basically, but better city in other ways). SoCal weather isn't really weather --- I get bored with the monotony of it.

Our housing stock isn't built to trap heat

Strangely enough, neither is ours. The older housing stock in the PNW is constructed pretty much the same as in SoCal.

266: Whereas the Indian tribes in your neck of the woods MOVED when it got that fucking cold, because they were sensible people.

267: I like Seattle better too, but I really do not mind the "monotony" of sunny days, nope. And Mr. B. got a job here, so here we are. It's a nice place. I am happy with it. You people are all a bunch of envious trolls.

I think that "water mining" was being referred to. The wells are being drilled deeper every year, and water is being taken out much faster than it is being replenished by rainfall.

I think that "water mining" was being referred to. The wells are being drilled deeper every year, and water is being taken out much faster than it is being replenished by rainfall.

I think that "water mining" was being referred to. The wells are being drilled deeper every year, and water is being taken out much faster than it is being replenished by rainfall.

||
Hey ogged, have you seen this? Some amazing shots in there.
|>

Having spent time in Mpls, Chi, and now SF, I feel qualified to offer opinions on weather:

Living in the cold is not that bad. I am boggled by the fear of cold weather that is almost always relayed to me by natives when I tell them where I grew up. I told my roommate's new girlfriend--a Berkeley native--that it was 20 degrees when I was home for Thanksgiving, and her response was something along the lines of "Oh my god, I would just sit inside and cry." Oh, come on. It's really not that bad. You bundle up. It's mildly unpleasant. But I could live in that again easily.

That said, the warm is almost always preferable to the cold. I don't fear cold, but I don't seek it out either. Warm is fine with me. I don't "miss the seasons." The dawn-following-darkest hour feeling of spring that I believe AWB points out above is indeed nice, but probably not enough of a draw in itself to get me back there.

Cold does, however, have one genuine virtue: It facilitates downhill skiing. This is important. But the skiing's better here anyway, even if it is farther away. Tahoe beats the 200 vertical feet of Powder Ridge.

I suppose freshly fallen snow is very pretty too.

The adaptation thing is real, though. Back when I was a tyke, and we had real winter in Mpls, the first spring day it was 40 degrees it felt about 20 degrees warmer than an equivalent fall day, and we would excitedly run onto the playground in shirtsleeves.

Shorter me: The weather, not that big of a deal.

Continuously but very thinly populated, with an apparent big die-off or migration out of the Anasazi around 1300 AD.

Recent estimates of precolumbian population are much higher than older ones. Lots of death from disease in the contact period.

The Anasazi do seem to have abandoned their bigger sites around 1300, but they didn't leave the region, they just moved to more fertile areas such as the Rio Grande valley, where they became the Pueblo people who inhabit those areas to this day.

B is sabotaging my comments again.

In this area there was a tendency toward westward migration, but not southward, and the westward migration was driven by pressure from European immigrants.

273: Wow. I particularly like this.

Cool! Thanks, Josh!

I get bored with the monotony of it

It is not monotonous. It varies subtly but importantly. It takes a few season cycles to catch on to this.

I think that "water mining" was being referred to. The wells are being drilled deeper every year, and water is being taken out much faster than it is being replenished by rainfall.

WTF? Not around here, at least. We're actually doing fine for water right now; 2007 was a better year for rainfall and snowfall than the previous few years had been.

B is sabotaging my comments again.

Maybe your power lines are freezing up, old man.

AAs far as I know the pre-Columbian population of the American SW never approached the present population, and the per capita load on the environment was much less too. It's all dependent on water mining and will time out at some point unless the arctic rivers are sent south or desalinized sea water becomes cheap.

I'm in Oregon now, in a poorly heated, poorly-insulated house.

282: Are you seriously lecturing me on this? I live here. I know full well what the environmental issues are.

And I don't know what you mean by "water mining" but there are places like Saudi Arabia where most of the water supply comes from fossil water that isn't replenished and is literally mined. The US southwest isn't like that; our water comes from aquifers that are replenished by rainwater, and to a lesser extent from rivers that are replenished by snowmelt.

As I understood it the water problem in the Southwest is mainly driven by global warming, not anything inherent.

Sorry, I lose track of which places are going to run out of water because of depleting the aquifers, and which places are going to run out of water because climate change leads to less snowfall and lower levels in rivers and lakes.

284: What you're saying doesn't fit the argument we're having. The SW is inhabitable at a low level, but the present levels (and standard of living) are unsustainable. (I'm not saying that you are, but lots of people are complete idiots about the places where they live.

And the SW will, of course, remain inhabitable at the present level as long as new sources of water are found or produced, but this isn't a sure thing. As far as I know it's uncontroversial to say that the ground water in the SW is being depleted much faster than it's being replenished; that's why wells are bing drilled deeper.

285: Yeah, the potential problem is that global warming disrupts the usual precipitation problems so that we get less rain and snow than usual and the rivers and aquifers don't replenish enough for the usage level required by current development. This is possible, but it's not yet clear if it will actually be the predominate effect of global warming. We've been in a severe drought for the past few years, but like I said 2007 was actually quite wet, so it's not clear what role global warming plays in recent trends.

Right, I think you're conflating me and Teo. The greater LA area and indeed much of California has indeed been greedily depleting groundwater and killing rivers for quite some time now.

287: What argument are we having? I'm just explaining how the water system works here.

As far as I know it's uncontroversial to say that the ground water in the SW is being depleted much faster than it's being replenished; that's why wells are bing drilled deeper.

I'm not saying this isn't happening anywhere in the southwest, but what's your evidence that it is? I don't know of any wells being drilled deeper.

I think it depends on where in the Southwest you are. Depletion of the Ogalalla aquifer isn't an obscure concept, nor is mining of fossil water generally.

Having just returned to the land of high 30s/low 40s, heavy overcast, and drizzle, I find that absence really hasn't made the heart grow all that much fonder. Winter in the northwest is perfectly tolerable, but far from ideal. I'm just fine with going to winter every now and then instead of just sitting around waiting for it to come to me.

289: Yeah, California and the interior west are really quite different in this respect.

Phoenix patterns with LA, of course, and I suspect that's what Emerson is really talking about here.

As for the precolumbian issue, in those days the main centers of population were the Rio Grande and Gila valleys. California was pretty marginal. The current pattern is the reverse, and I'm not denying that it's probably unsustainable in the long term.

I think Emerson's just looking for a way to troll people who live in warmer climates.

295: I agree.

Which is not to say that I approve of your decadent resource-squandering ways.

Yeah, yeah, whatthefuckever. I'm going to go turn on all the taps in the house now and let them run all night long just to piss you people off.

Maybe go for a nice long drive too.

The information most readily available is about the Oglala aquifer farther east:

New water enters the aquifer extremely slowly. In most of the Ogallala region, pumping exceeds recharge rates, a process known as water mining, and the net volume is steadily decreasing. Region-wide, less than 0.5% of the water pumped each year is replaced by infiltration of rainwater. At current rates of pumping, the resource should be 80% depleted by about 2020.

Link

I don't have anything specific about NM. AZ, and Southern Cal, but most of that area is even more arid than the area using the Oglala aquifer, and as I understand the lower Colorado river has been almost completely destroyed.

299: The car is in Las Vegas with my husband.

I don't have anything specific about NM. AZ, and Southern Cal, but most of that area is even more arid than the area using the Oglala aquifer, and as I understand the lower Colorado river has been almost completely destroyed.

True, but we don't have the same kind of intensive agriculture here that you find on the Great Plains (which is where the Oglala aquifer is). Much less water-intensive development. Which is not to say that the current level of development is sustainable either, but the issues are different.

The car is in Las Vegas with my husband.

You could rent one.

Yes, at 11:00 pm on a Sunday night. I'll get right on that.

The USGS, in cooperation with the city of Albuquerque, conducted a study during 1993-94 that helped confirm that the most productive zone of the Santa Fe Group aquifer system is much less extensive and thinner than was previously assumed. Water-level declines are greater than predicted by hydrologic investigations in the 1960's, and nonpumping water levels in some city production wells have declined more than 100 feet in recent years.

The USGS report is pretty vague, which doesn't strike me as a good sign at all. As far as I know, the system was being overstressed even before global warming became a factor.

I'm just backing up whoever it was who said that the SW is, in a sense, uninhabitable at present levels. The arguments against what he said struck me as weak.

JE, I finally responded to your e-mail from a week or so ago. Getting out of town was crazy but I'm here now.

I'm just backing up whoever it was who said that the SW is, in a sense, uninhabitable at present levels. The arguments against what he said struck me as weak.

It was Cryptic Ned, and that's not what he said at all. What he said was (comment 250):

The ability to live a stable lifestyle in the southwestern US is only possible during this blip of history.

Which isn't true at all. Puebloan societies go back thousands of years and involve dense, urbanized settlement, which definitely implies stable lifestyles. That's all I'm saying.

As for the USGS report (which was a big deal when it first came out), that just determined that the aquifer wasn't virtually limitless, which people had for some reason been assuming for the previous few decades, leading to a great deal of extremely ill-advised development in Albuquerque. I'm not saying we're perfect here.

Google "New Mexico" (or "Albuquerque") + "water mining". There's lots of stuff. The city of Albuquerque does seem to be pretty proactive. Everything I've read so far is vague about the specifics.

More

the real lifestyle based on unsustainable water mining action is taking place in kansas and nebraska. both are solidly republican so it's ok to hate them for their shortsightedness.

as for the lower colorado, isn't it more diverted than destroyed in any meaningful sense?

isn't it more diverted than destroyed in any meaningful sense?

Yes, but is there another meaningful sense? Water doesn't just disappear.

309: I don't need to google anything; I know what's going on. I think they recently completed the San Juan-Chama thing.

besides, san francisco has claimed all the hetch hetch water, so we don't need any of that brita junk, and we also aren't letting anyone move here, so we have no water worries at all. neener.

WTF? Not around here, at least. We're actually doing fine for water right now; 2007 was a better year for rainfall and snowfall than the previous few years had been.

None of the sources I could find said that Albuquerque has stopped drilling wells deeper, or has a sustainable water supply. It did say that the situation has improved over the last decade or two. The vagueness strikes me as fishy; I think that success would be reported loudly.

Shut the fuck up, John. You don't know what you're talking about.

You want specifics? Here you go.

Teo, that's way over the top.

311: well, complex ecosystems involving lots of plants that take a long time to grow can be more meaningfully destroyed than a river that runs through a desert and supports various seasonal grasses and such. see the mississipi delta etc.

also my sense is that a lot of groundwater gets used for pretty marginal agriculture that could be phased out in exchange for shipping food by train from more hospitable areas. which is a very unpleasant lifestyle change for the farmers involved, but not so much for everyone else.

310, 311: Diverting a major river like that effectively destroys it. The water's no longer available for the ecosystem it once supported.

Teo, that's way over the top.

Well, I'm fucking pissed at the way he keeps pontificating about things he doesn't know anything about right in front of people who do know about them.

One of the reasons I bought a 25 year old house in Sandy rather than a larger, newer place on the west side of the valley is that the Metropolitan Water District that supplies Salt Lake City with water serves only one additional city, and that city is Sandy. 7 members of the Board of Trustees, two of them directly appointed by Sandy City.

Pay attention to the local politics of this stuff everybody. I suspect it's going to be a big deal down the road.

318, 319: Oh, you mean in ecological terms. In that case, sure, I guess. I just mean the water's still ending up somewhere in either case.

Where's Megan? She has actual expertise about this stuff.

318: Desert ecosystems aren't the empty spaces you might think. They're incredibly fragile and the damage that's been done to the Colorado (for instance) is really quite bad stuff.

317: really? out of character i'll grant, but over the top?

321: Yeah, one of the reasons we want to buy (if we ever manage it) on this side of the freeway rather than closer to the beach is because we're hoping that we can buy a place that'll still be there when PK goes off to college.

Show me that you know what you're talking about, teo. As I've said, "being from the area" is not a guarantee. I've had multiple encounters confirming this conclusion. Sometimes the people on the site are the biggest idiots (e.g., commercial fishermen). You have given me no specifics at all, just assurances, and the stuff I've found on the internet is not conclusive.

Jesus Christ, John. What kinds of specifics do you want? I linked in 316 to a very specific thing that's being done to deal with the issue of groundwater depletion in Albuquerque, which was mentioned as well in the article you linked in 309. I only entered into this argument to counter Ned's ill-informed comment that stable lifestyles have never been possible in the southwest before now, and I'm not an expert on water issues by any means, but I have lived here for a while and heard about things like the USGS report you linked when they first appeared, so I know the context of all this better than you do, at least.

320: Teo, I have some experience with getting annoyed when people who don't live where I do get into conversations about local issues that they're not seeing in the daily newspaper like I am. But I'm cautious about getting outraged because sometimes it turns out that they've done some research and know more about what's going on in my area than I do.

From the link in 316:

We are now moving quickly to begin using the San Juan-Chama water because our current system, which relies entirely on pumping groundwater from an underground aquifer, is being seriously depleted. Right now, only about 50 percent of the water pumped from that aquifer is recharged, or replenished. The rest is lost forever.

No doubt I'm appallingly ignorant too, but building a large diversion project so that you can draw from the Colorado River system instead of continuing to overdraw local aquifers strikes me as something less than a devastating refutation of what John's been posting. What am I missing here?

I've tried to convince my mother that our summer house, situated four feet above the water in a neighborhood of 60s-era lagoons, is really not a good investment. She just calls me paranoid.

And I don't even know what you think I'm arguing. I'm not saying that the City of Albuquerque's record on water issues has been good, because it hasn't. I'm not even saying that the type of development that characterizes most of the southwest right now is sustainable, because it isn't. I'm just saying that these issues are complicated and highly dependent on differences in resources and land use from place to place (even within a single region), and generalizing from things you've heard about the situation in Nebraska to an apocalyptic outlook for the whole western half of the country is absurd.

No doubt I'm appallingly ignorant too, but building a large diversion project so that you can draw from the Colorado River system instead of continuing to overdraw local aquifers strikes me as something less than a devastating refutation of what John's been posting. What am I missing here?

New Mexico gets a certain amount of the water in the Colorado River system due to a multi-state compact signed decades ago, but since very little of the system goes through the state we generally don't use all the water we're entitled to. Thus, when the depletion of the aquifer was discovered they decided to divert some of that water into the Rio Grande and start drawing on river water to supplement the aquifer (which until then had been the sole water source for the city of Albuquerque).

Any more questions?

Teo's been eating his Wheaties.

I understand your frustration, teo, but 332 doesn't really address the point I think NPH was making --- moving of an aquifier that has been abused to the colorado system sounds a bit like out of the fry pan, into the fire....

I should really go to bed, but now I'm all angry.

And you're right that groundwater issues are complex and localized. On the other hand, it seems the outlook is pretty bleak for much of the SW --- assuming current trends continue. If the water can't be found, though, current trends won't continue (at least, the ones that we can change).

I understand your frustration, teo, but 332 doesn't really address the point I think NPH was making --- moving of an aquifier that has been abused to the colorado system sounds a bit like out of the fry pan, into the fire....

WHAT THE FUCK IS EVERYONE TALKING ABOUT? I'm just trying to explain how the water system works in the place where I live. I'm not making any sort of political point about whether any of this is a good idea or not.

And yes, it's unsustainable etc. etc. and we're going to be facing some hard decisions down the line. I'm not saying otherwise, but people keep acting like I am.

330: Yeah, our realtor friend said we were the first people who had ever asked what the elevation of a neighborhood was. She seemed actually surprised.

Honestly, I just came into this conversation to make a point about the Anasazi.

Well, one of your main arguments is STFU. At any point you could have gotten more specific. As I said, everything was assurances, not details. B was arguing that Canada is uninhabitable, and Ned pointed out that the SW is less inhabitable, and then you argued that it was too inhabitable, but ignored the questions of scale. Things got more serious than they had started, and I carried on from there. If you want to point to a place that shouldn't be inhabited at its present level, the SW and Southern Cal are better candidates than Canada.

332: And it's notorious that the multi-state compact way over-allocated the river because it allocated an average flow that turned out to be based on a series of unusually wet years. And that upper basin states can take all the water they're "entitled" to only by reducing what lower basin states take, which may be all fair and legal and above-board but also means that you're not so much a unique local situation as one piece of one of a long-running resource battle over the Colorado. So far the river's been losing that one.

Ned pointed out that the SW is less inhabitable, and then you argued that it was too inhabitable, but ignored the questions of scale.

Right, and that was intentional because I didn't want to get dragged into this exact argument that I somehow got dragged into anyway.

If you want to point to a place that shouldn't be inhabited at its present level, the SW and Southern Cal are better candidates than Canada.

I won't argue with that.

343: Yes, true. Again, I don't disagree with any of the environmental arguments here.

This is what I hate about this place. Why does everything have to be an argument?

338: The problem is that you seem to have overrun your expertise and then gotten mad about being called on it. There's no shame in the former, but the latter is bad form.

341: Yeah, should have left it at that. "Uninhabitable" is hyperbole, but that doesn't mean they're isn't a problem, as you've acknowledged in between being outraged.

Teo, 261 made some general comments about the water situation in the SW. Generally. In 280, I guess *you* moved to talking specifically about Albuquerque, but the comment you were responding to wasn't that specific, so it seemed like your "not around here, at least" was using a specific instance to make more general claims about an entire multi-state area. 288 contributed to this. In retrospect, yeah, you're mostly only talking about Albuquerque, but since John was speaking more generally and you were continually engaging him, you gave the distinct impression, repeatedly, that you were generalizing from your specific, small area.

And in any case, it's not a good argument that just because someone isn't local, they don't know the issues.

She seemed actually surprised.

That's a little scary, B. At this point it's willful ignorance.

Nobody knows whether this stuff is "sustainable". We haven't even begun to do rational water conservation, in part because water isn't even vaguely close to being correctly priced yet. No one is feeling these theoretical pressures; once they do we'll get a better sense for what kinds of adjustments will actually be necessary.

341: you could modulate it to read: unsustainable in anything like the numbers and life-style that is being attempted.

B was arguing that Canada is uninhabitable, and Ned pointed out that the SW is less inhabitable . . . If you want to point to a place that shouldn't be inhabited at its present level, the SW and Southern Cal are better candidates than Canada.

Bah. I was arguing *as a question of taste* that Canada sucks. For me. Ned wasn't making a statement about taste; he was making a (factually untrue) statement about literal inhabitability, which you turned into an argument about ecological problems. Which yes, California (at least) is seriously overpopulated and agriculturally overproductive as far as its water resources are concerned. Nonetheless, for the time being, it is a really lovely place to live.

Okay, I admit that I wasn't my usual cool, calm, collected self in many of my comments in this thread. I will say that I really truly didn't intend for any of my early comments to be read with the subtext that everything is therefore okay and we don't need to worry about water conservation. I was just stating some facts that I knew that it seemed some other people didn't know.

349: Agreed.

350: Oh, I'm quite willing to say that California's water use is completely unsustainable. Ditto major cities in Nevada and Arizona.

Further to 347: but I don't think anyone else is mad, and I don't think anyone's going to be down on you tomorrow because of an argument tonight, so it's not a big deal and you shouldn't worry about it.

In partial defense of Teo, it is rather basic to confuse aquifer water, which is not rechargeable at a rapid rate, with water that is recharged seasonally through snowmelt and rain.

I was irrationally mad earlier because I like it here and find the (broadly speaking, general) attitude of hypereducated folks towards California annoyingly cliche-ridden. But I'm over it now.

Don't aquifers differ a whole lot in how rapidly they recharge? In areas with significant rainfall and permeable soils I don't think it takes very long, at least for the shallower aquifers.

355: I guess not. I don't really understand why other people don't get mad about these arguments. I think I would enjoy Unfogged more if I didn't, but as it is it infuriates me on a regular basis.

And on that note, I really should go to bed. Good night, everyone.

359: Mostly because we're old and jaded, I think.

Well, to be fair, Teo, this particular argument was one you picked. It's not so cool to pick an argument and then complain about "everything turning into an argument."

Oh, I'm quite willing to say that California's water use is completely unsustainable. Ditto major cities in Nevada and Arizona.

My point was that we don't have a good idea of what levels of water use are compatible with current and future levels of population in those areas, since we haven't made very serious efforts to conserve water or divert it from unproductive uses.

Not that I really understand all the issues either. Like "peak oil", this is an area where the real issues seem highly technical and there is a lot of both doom-mongering and complacency among the lay people.

I suspect it infuriates you because you are depressed and lonely and want this place to keep you company, but aren't really in a good state of mind to be contradicted or realize when your own specific sense of what's at stake isn't shared by the group.

I say this because I was there myself, back when I lived on the uninhabitable tundra.

If I'm going to have any chance of making it out of bed tomorrow in time to seek out some snow and cold on purpose I'd better get some sleep now. 'Night all.

363: Those are really two separate issues PGD. What is done today in terms of consumption is unsustainable.

What is a sustainable usage is a tricky question; assuming that can be estimated well, it's a different issue what can be done, technologically, with that fixed usage. And you are quite right, it's not an issue that has been really deeply explored. Obviously for a fixed population, things would look different than they do at this usage level --- but exactly how different is hard to say.

That's not even getting into the amount of usage that is tied up with agriculture, that may be unsustainable for unrelated reasons (field corn etc., say).

we don't have a good idea of what levels of water use are compatible with current and future levels of population . . . since we haven't made very serious efforts to conserve water

Oh, definitely. But my general sense of the amount of water we've sucked from the land in the last 50-60 years leads me to suspect that current population levels are too high, even though it's certainly also true that current standards of water use are ridiculously luxurious. We've got no business having green lawns.

Right. No green lawns, household grey-water, restricted flow/low use appliances .... you can go a long way from what is current practice. At least in theory (some of that isn't cheap).

However, I don't have a good feel for how much usage is ag, how much household. Do you, B? (for calif)

I suspect CA may be better off in the long run than many places as shitloads of sun + ocean means there's future alternatives in both energy and water that won't be available to everyone.

From what I've *read*, agricultural use in CA is actually bigger and more wasteful than household use. But I have to admit (and maybe it's just my valley roots here) that I'm a lot more sympathetic to the idea of wasting water to grow rice than I am to wasting it for green lawns and koi ponds and showering every damn day.

And yes, I'm hoping that the sun + ocean will make a big difference. But it's really tragic that before we get there we're going to have fucked up a lot of wetlands, a lot of riparian zones, a lot of native species. Hell, we already have.

I do believe that restricted flow toilets and faucets are required by law, though. And I remember the days when you could get ticketed for watering your lawn after 8 am or whenever it was.

Plus! Every Californian I've known well enough to know (if ykwim) has, like me, tended to leave pee in the toilet rather than flushing every time.

If that's the case, economizing the hell out of home usage won't fix the issue (more likely it'll just allow a bunch more people), so long as we're still thinking along the lines of the bigAg industrial agriculture as currently practiced in the valley.

It's a tempting approach, and has a lot to do with the low pricing of food, but it's wasteful. Maybe the fertilizer problem will get it before the water one does, I dunno.

It's a complicated problem. But I think that an awful lot more destruction will happen before enough people get hurt (financially or otherwise) that there's any serious attempt at fixing it.

371 is a start, yes. Washing machines and dishwashers are a big problem too though. Next step up is grey water systems, which make all kinds of sense from a conservation point of view, but require infrastructure. Maybe we'll see legislation on new housing start that.

Maybe the fertilizer problem will get it before the water one does

Well, they reinforce each other. The valley dirt gets saltier every year.

re: 371

In large parts of the UK watering the lawn is banned in the summer months. And we aren't exactly short of rain [much of the year].

I'm amazed it's allowed at all in drier states of the US.

Having just had to drive to the damn airport in a city covered in ice, I can understand the desire for a warmer clime.

But here's the thing. O, you northerners, how you developed houses and heating to ward away the elements, cry those of warm climates! When my college boyfriend moved from Houston to Pittsburgh, he complained about... the heat. Pittsburgh is much more temperate and most of the rental houses don't have central air conditioning. Whereas in Houston, everything is cooled to a nice 65 degrees all year round. Seems to be the same in Atlanta. So there is a part of me that doesn't buy the 'we live where humans were meant to live in temperatures we were meant to live in', at least as applied to the South.

377: I recall from the time I lived in Houston that the story was that in pre-AC days British Petroleum paid their employees in Houston their standard "tropical bonus". However, as I write this this morning it seems most likely to be apocryphal (from the remove of 1200 miles, 25 years and 70 degrees).

But "hyper-cool" indoor spaces in Houston and Atlanta along with really green lawns in Phoenix and LA are certainly prominent aspects of the perversely hubristic lifestyle of the US.

A friend tried Ketamine for a psych lab experiment. While he was dosed, they had him do word games. The first word game was "How many words can you name that start with the letter 'S'?" He could name six.

My experience was similar, though that level of confusion abated pretty quickly.

This is how I know that American society is decadent and wasting - you only think of the weather in terms of your own physical comfort. At least John is protected from attack[1] by Generals Janvier and Fevrier.

Sitting by the window with my son, on a stormy day:

Little Napoleon Adolf: I hate it when it's too windy and rainy to play outside, Daddy.
Me: Those storms sink the boats of our enemies, son.
Little NA: yeah.

[1] Except an attack by the Inuit, I suppose.

380: The threat from the Skrælings should not be underestimated.

380- When I was a kid, I went to the hospital to get something not too serious bandaged up. With the doctor, somehow weather came up and I told him I loved snow. He told me about the people who get seriously or killed in a variety of ways as a result of snow. Oh, ok.

seriously *hurt*

re: 380

I hope little Napoleon Adolf brandished his Serbian dagger in the air on the 'yeah'.

happy birthday
when i turned 30, i bought three very dark red roses, put into the vase and went to junkanki gakkai, it was in Japan then
after three days i came back and saw the roses all black and dry, forgot to put water into it
i found that very ominous
and i got a letter from the clinic reminding about the first obligatory mammogram
so i know how you feel but it's ok, not much difference and pretty enjoyable age

Since it looks like this post made it barely 40 comments before turning into urbane chit-chat, let me say that there is a much simpler solution to Becks's basic desire: controllable time-sense. We all know that we perceive time differently based on the situation. So if this could be just flicked on, Becks could choose to relax and let things flow by, at the end knowing what happened but not in much detail, and not having suffered one bit more than the situation called for.

Since this is purely mental, all philosophical objections will be redeemable for beatings.

On Thursday, when the first of the two big storms dumped 8 inches of snow on us, I looked out the window and said, with glee, "It's a veritable winter wonderland!"

Man, I live for days like that.

Happy 30th birthday youngster! h00t.

I so wanted something wintry this weekend. No luck. The DC area was "spared".

A week until Christmas Eve, I guess I'd better get started on the shopping.

i got a letter from the clinic reminding about the first obligatory mammogram

Wait a minute! Read is a chick? Who knew?

Oh, and happy birthday, Becks.

1) Happy birthday, Becks

2) We've at least got snow now, in more depth than we've had in recent years.

3) Our first place together was a floor of a converted house on Dorchester, without a real shower, where the walls were such a jarring color we had to paint while moving in, and none of the interior doors really fit. But it had working fireplaces in both the shag-carpeted living room and our bedroom. Of course we did; rug burns until you get the hang of it.

60: John D MacDonald did it first.

He told me about the people who get seriously or killed in a variety of ways as a result of snow.

The most bizarre wintry death that I can recall from my childhood in the uninhabitable tundra: a 34-year old woman died after being hit on the head by a giant icicle.

#393:I saw that happen in front of me in the street in Helsinki. Damnedest thing I ever saw. The bloke wasn't dead, but he was in a pretty bloody bad way.

Read is a chick?

That was my reaction, too.

Philosophy and water-resource management can wait...

The first thing you need to do, now that you're thirty and your mutant powers have come to the surface (the fools! don't they realise that what is actual is possible?), is to work out your superhero name.

Fast Forward Girl? Maybe. But could be confused with Fast And Forward Girl, who puts supervillains out of action by sleeping with them on the first date.

Becks! Happy Birthday!

How did I miss that?

happy birthday becks!!

393: that happens a fair amount. I recall two cases from my own youth. It's not too surprising when you look up and consider the omnipresence of icicles.

400!

Read could top us all with stories of cold, but she politely refrained. UB is the coldest city of its size in the world (Winnipeg is second). Some of the inland Siberian cities may be colder, but they're not very big.

cut the craziness and do more mindfulness training you life-haters