Mossy sends in without comment: In memoriam: Jack D Ives, 1931-2024; The scientist who debunked the myth of Himalayan degradation and warned of climate breakdown

It's a good read! Go do so.

[Their 1986 book Uncertainly on a Himalayan Scale] showed how the Theory of Himalayan Degradation's untenable orthodoxy held sway over Eric Ekholm (Losing Ground, 1976), BBC's David Attenborough (1984) and Britain's Overseas Development Agency (1997), making them each predict a dozen years apart that Nepal would have no forest left by 2000. Community forestry since the 1980s has contributed to Nepal doubling its forest cover to 45% of its area in the past 25 years.

The Bergen conference was almost Mohonk-3. By this time, Jack's new book Himalayan Perceptions (2004, Routledge) was already in the press. It saw him increasingly worried about the continuing hold of the simplistic 'poor and fecund mountain farmers cutting trees' alarm over policies of governments, university departments, think tanks and international development agencies.

The bigger threat to the well-being of mountain people came from the fact that most mountains were marginalised borders where hostile armies faced each other, where national urban centres ruthlessly exploited the highland peripheries, and where elite business-led bad development practices made matters worse.

He also saw the real danger of climate change (a scientific reality with wide and long-term consequences) being hijacked by vested interest groups to push bad policies, making it the new THED. If he had not passed away in mid-September and lived to see the end-September flood havoc across Nepal, he would have been alarmed to see how bad engineering and land encroachment policies that made the natural event a major disaster are so easily covered up by blaming climate change.

Heh:

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(This has definitely been asserted by commenters here already, I'm just amused by the confirmation.)

For the record, obviously the best quasi-game at the NYT is the weekly Flashback quiz. I just love assembling the different histories worldwide into a single timeline.

Happy holidays, all. It's legit snowing here, and the Geeblets are appropriately big-eyed and wondrous about it, which is very cute.

How about an open thread? I can't imagine there's much news today.

Idk, it's a slow news week and I thought this was cute:

In German, Kevinismus ("Kevinism") is the negative preconception German people have of Germans with trendy, exotic-sounding first names considered to be an indicator of a low social class.[1] The prototypical example is Kevin, which like most such names came to Germany from Anglo-American culture. Specifically, the 1990 comedy Home Alone, the German title of which Kevin - Allein zu Haus includes the hero's name, is credited with making Kevin to be the most popular boys' name chosen in Germany in 1991.[2] Kevin Costner's 1990 film Dances with Wolves is often cited as an additional factor.[3] Both films were released in Germany in 1991 and were the two most successful films there in that year.[4]

Sometimes Chantalismus ("Chantalism") is used as a female equivalent, from the French name Chantal.[5]

Way cuter than that French rape trial! (Which is so unbelievably horrible. This is the least of anyone's concerns, but I'm sort of curious about what their marriage was like for the first 40 years. Based on Wikipedia, it sounds like it had its ups and downs, and then took a hard right turn when they retired to Mazan. Like, was he mostly-not a monster until age 60, and then cracked? Or are there years of him raping people outside the family prior to then? Wikipedia just says that he got caught taking upskirt photos in 2010.)

Greetings from Santa Fe! (We leave today and head on to Colorado.)

1. I have one incredibly depressing link:

Texas is putting up dozens of billboards in Mexico and Central American countries warning migrants of the dangers of trying to come to the U.S., Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday.

The billboards will offer bleak messages in multiple languages. "Many girls who try to migrate to Texas are kidnapped," one will say. "Your wife and daughter will pay for their trip with their bodies," will read another. A third will ask, "How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?"

2. To balance that out, I have a vague musing from one of the podcasts we listened to yesterday. The two hosts were saying that they are both bad at being by themselves. They both said they had to busy themselves and maybe put the TV on. This is so foreign to me!

But it's not just because my house is too crazy - they both have had full households as well. (When I was single, I was sometimes deeply lonely, but I didn't necessarily want company. The loneliness was a bit more existential.)

Are you bad at being by yourself? I'm guessing this might be a divide between who chooses to be a chatty podcast host, and who chooses to be a chatty internet commenter.