Stupidest Man Alive: Special "Truthiness" Edition

I confess that I have misjudged Jonah Goldberg. I did not think he had the mojo to make a *serious* play for the Stupidest Man Alive^TM crown. But he does.

We all know why Jonah claimed that America's Great Plains used to be a great forest until the American Indians burned it down. At some point, Jonah Goldberg dozed through an American history lecture, part of which was on Changes in the Land--a book about the ecology of New England in the centuries before my Pilgrim and Puritan ancestors arrived. The lecturer said that the Massachusetts tribes set fires to reduce underbrush and to create more meadows where deer could feed. But in poor Jonah Goldberg's brain, Wampanoag = Souix, Massasoit = Sitting Bull, coastal Massachusetts = South Dakota, and so the statement that Massachusetts tribes set fires to create more meadows where deer could live turned inside Jonah's brain into the statement that the Indians burnt the giant forest of the Great Plains to the ground to hunt buffalo--all Injuns looking alike to Jonah.

It's quite funny. It's somewhat sad. But the claim that the Indians turned the Giant Forest into the Great Plains is not something that anyone would dare in the light of day defend, is it?

Surprise, surprise, Jonah Goldberg does, and so digs himself in deeper:

The Corner on National Review Online : As for... "The great plains used to be a giant forest. The Indians burnt it to the ground to hunt buffalo"... it's a basically sound point.... I suggest DeLong pick up a copy of The Ecological Indian, Myth and History by Shepard Krech. He writes, "The evidence that Indians lit fires that then were allowed to burn destructively and without regard to ecological consequences is abundant." He has a whole chapter simply called "Fire." "By the time Europeans arrived, North American was a manipulated continent," Krech continues. "Indians had long since altered the landscape by burning or clearing woodland for farming and fuel. Despite European images of an untouched Eden, this nature was cultural not virgin, anthropogenic not primeval, and nowhere is this more evident than in the Indian use of fire."

Well, I have Shepard Krech III of Brown University right here in email. He writes:

Brad, The best source for me is The Ecological Indian, pp. 101-22 [chapter on fire]. The plains and prairies are discussed in several places, especially pp 115-16. The following are excerpts:

Prior to the suppression of fires in the nineteenth century, many of North America's forest and grassland ecosystems were fire-succession ecosystems; that is, fires produced and maintained them. Forest and fire ecologists appreciate the association between regular fire and ecological types and successions in ponderosa pine, chaparral, longleaf pine, and grassland habitats. Native people, keen observers of the environment, surely understood the associations long before. Not only were these ecosystems pyrogenic (produced by fire) but they were anthropogenic (produced by man) to the degree that the fires which ran through them were also. Through their fires, North American Indians probably played some role in the creation of, and more certainly maintained, a number of fire-succession ecosystems....[113]

Some assert that with their fires, Indians were responsible for the formation of the vast grasslands ecosystem of the Great Plains, others that they did not form it but probably helped maintain it, and still others that they did neither because their technology could not possibly have played such a formative role in an ecosystem so large. Whatever the influence of Indian fires, there are strong climatic and environmental reasons for doubting that fires were the only or even the major formative one. In the central and western Plains, compared to eastern portions, there is less moisture from rain and snow, lower humidity, higher winds, and more periodic drought. Singly or in combination, these conditions prevent forest formation and growth and would lead to extensive grasslands without help from fire. Yet increased precipitation as one moves east makes tree growth far more a reality in the eastern and northern high-grass portions of the Plains, where fire played a greater role maintaining grasslands: for centuries observers remarked on the charred stumps or extensive root systems of mature trees ravaged by regular fires, their remnants enhancing deep grassland soils. In the east and north, fires--some lightning-caused, others anthropogenic--were important in checking natural succession of grassland by forest. When fires were checked, aspens, oaks, and willows proliferated. In the north aspen groves expanded, and in the east oak openings closed as groves of trees broke up the grasslands and in places, forest eventually consumed them.

The effect of grassland fires depends on the same factors as elsewhere: the season of the burn, time of the last burn, heat of the fire, wind, temperature, terrain, soil, moisture, and so on. Grassland fires move with extraordinary speed when grasses are dry and wind is up, but they also move irregularly over uneven terrain, sometimes skip over areas, and rarely consume plants so completely that their roots are burned. After the fires pass, burned areas cool quickly. Productivity often increases following grassland fires because surface litter is removed. Tall-grass prairie needs at least three years to return to its pre-burn state, though grazing animals like buffalo return immediately to tender young plants growing after the burn. But not all grassland fires are benign and restorative. When they are too frequent or hot, when moisture is low, or when heavy rains follow fires and cause erosion, plants may not easily recover....[115-16]

I also discuss the Willamette Valley grasslands. The endnotes are extensive. You can easily arrive at your own conclusions from my text. Needless to say, many whose politics range across the spectrum misread the book.

best,

shep krech

Funny how Shepard Krech's "whatever the influence of Indian fires [on the Great Plains], there are strong climatic and environmental reasons for doubting that fires were the only or even the major formative [cause]" doesn't make it into Goldberg's summary, isn't it? Goldberg claims he wants people to read The Ecological Indian, but I think that's the last thing he really wants anybody to do.

Normally, I would say here that this would be really funny if it weren't so sad, and really sad if it weren't so funny. But this time this is really funny because it is really sad. Here we have an extraordinary example of Stephen Colbert's concept of "truthiness"--that in Goldberg's world, everybody is not only entitled to their own opinion, but also entitled to make up their own facts. In this case Jonah Goldberg makes up his own facts about what Shep Krech wrote in The Ecological Indian. The idea is not to say anything about pre-1492 America--not to write true sentences--but to write "truthy" sentences that make the readers of National Review feel good.

But Kate G. and Tim Burke say this better than I can. Here's Kate:

Kate G.: I'm not sure what a "neurotic" post looks like. Does it wash its hands a lot? Does it look hunted and scared of things? Does it cry a lot? My keyboard, alas, is dry and my withers are unwrung.

In my opinion great ad hominem invective is, of course, its own raison d'etre--that's a feature, not a bug, so I take the compliment.

But to get back to our case at hand, allow me to wring out my neurotic handkerchief and add this. Any defense of Jonah's remark which does not take into account his specific history, his education, and his employment simply misses the mark. In other words, I'd argue that even taking Jonah seriously enough to rebut his "facts" is a waste of time. If Jonah's point were to explore the historical issues surrounding Native American use of the environment I would definitely urge everyone to read up on this subject. For example, I second everyone else's fact based criticism and urge everyone to read Cronon's two books (because they are both excellent) and also a wonderful book called Reflections on Bullough's Pond (or else its Bullock) which explores the ecological and technological history of New England. It wouldn't be relevant to the specifics of Jonah's so called argument but I'd argue that that hardly matters. Not to me, that is, but to Jonah. As an anthropologist and a social scientist I have a special love of facts and information about societies, and hold no brief for any romanticized notion of "indigenous" societies (Nor do I live in a Jonaesque/RNC world in which determining that one people are "bad" means that some other people somewhere must be "good.") But I do have a lot of respect for subject expertiese. Jonah's own essays and comments don't fall under that heading. They are not really "about" a subject, like Indians or whatever. The proof of that is that he will be on to something else tomorrow, and he'll be pursuing it just as shallowly. Jonah's essays and comments have, instead, an *object*--which is purely political.

Jonah's arguments are simply bought and paid for (gee, I must have been channelling Krugman, or maybe we are both simply right) to advance a particular politico/economic goal. That goal is de-legitimizing, parodying, and truncating other histories and other arguments about society and politics. If you read Jonah, or other fellow travellers like Jeff Jacoby, Mallard Fillmore, or the RNC alerts circulated to the faithful you see the promulgation not only of the same messages (over and over) but the same tenous and tendentious links to "real" science and "real" history and "real" pop culture. Jonah uses words like "history" and "indians" and even "prarie" or "fire" but to paraphrase others in the blogosphere in reference to the Princess Bride [those] words don't mean what you are supposed to think he means by them. You'd actually have to know, or care, about history, indians, praries, fires and etc...to use them as true scholars would use them. My god, just look at Juan Cole's magisterial slap down of Jonah last year, and at Jonah's pathetic response, to begin to see how little Jonah cares about the topics on which he bloviates.

How do I know Jonah is a tool and not a true scholar? Because he will write about the next pop cultural or coffee table book image/factoid with the same authority tomorrow even if it outright contradicts his point today. That is because the object of his writing is simply to score points again and again against his enemies.

But you knew that.

Posted by: Kate G. February 07, 2006 at 11:06 AM

And here's Tim:

Tim Burke: Goldberg is making a bad and lazy gloss of an argument that's been made in a number of works published in the last decade, most incisively Shepherd Krech's book The Ecological Indian.

Krech and others have observed that Native Americans as a whole were not more notably inclined towards premodern versions of environmentalism than any other human society in history, and that the tendency to view them as such is something of a fiction created slowly and complicatedly in American culture over the last 150 years, especially in the last 50.

Krech synthesizes work on a variety of pre-Columbian Native American cultures that suggests, among other things, that some Southwest cultures outstripped their available resources, in part through intensive and misguided infrastructure (this is the same research that Diamond cites in his two recent books); that some Native Americans in the Rockies and Sierras used fire fairly extensively to produce the mix fo meadow and old-growth forest that was later regarded as pristine and natural wilderness; and that some Plains Native American societies may have used wasteful hunting methods such as driving large herds of buffalo off cliffs. And so on.

So very distantly, Goldberg is correctly summarizing several important arguments--that Native Americans were not uniformly or automatically deeply committed to spiritual or practical analogues of contemporary environmentalism, and that what some 19th Century Americans moving into the West took to be pristine, untouched wilderness environments were actually environments that were significantly altered by human presence.

That's all. The material on the buffalo and the plains and all that is simply his fantasy: it's not in any of the work that he might plausibly mean to refer to.

This is a basic problem with a lot of public discourse on the right, and sometimes the left: people who spout off to score a quick point who are profoundly careless.

Posted by: Timothy Burke | February 07, 2006 at 11:15 AM

Comments

[Delicious Pundit]

Nice "Annie Hall" reference, btw. Alternate post title could have been "You know nothing of my work."

[jerry]

http://www.answers.com/buffalo&r=67

WORD HISTORY The buffalo is so closely associated with the Wild West that one might assume that its name comes from a Native American word, as is the case with the words moose and skunk. In fact, however, buffalo can probably be traced back by way of one or more of the Romance languages through Late and Classical Latin and ultimately to the Greek word boubalos, meaning “an antelope or a buffalo.” The buffalo referred to by the Greek and Latin words was of course not the American one but an Old World mammal, such as the water buffalo of southern Asia. Applied to the North American mammal, buffalo is a misnomer, bison being the preferred term. As far as everyday usage is concerned, however, buffalo, first recorded for the American mammal in 1635, is older than bison, first recorded in 1774.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/krech-indian.html

October 17, 1999

The Ecological Indian
Myth and History
By SHEPARD KRECH 3d

PLEISTOCENE
EXTINCTIONS

Beginning 11,000 years ago, at the end of the period known as the Pleistocene, many animal species that had flourished just a short time before vanished from North America. Men and women had been in the New World for only a relatively short time, and scholars have hotly debated the coincidence of their arrival and the extinctions. Paul Martin, a palynologist and geochronologist, spurred the debate more than any other person. When he proclaimed in the late 1960s that "man, and man alone, was responsible" for the extinctions, he set off a firestorm that shows little sign of abating. Branding the ancient Indians—so-called Paleoindians—as superpredators, Martin likened their assault on Pleistocene animals to a blitzkrieg, evoking the aggressive, assaulting imagery of the Nazi war machine.

Martin could not have made a more apt word choice for grabbing the public imagination. Over the last three decades "American Blitzkrieg" and "Slaughter of Mastodons Caused Their Extinction" have defined headlines, and writers in popular magazines like National Geographic concluded confidently that scientists suspect "man the hunter" as the "villain" in Pleistocene extinctions.

There is no room for the Ecological Indian here. As Martin himself wrote in 1967, "that business of the noble savage, a child of nature, living in an unspoiled Garden of Eden until the `discovery' of the New World by Europeans is apparently untrue, since the destruction of fauna, if not of habitat, was far greater before Columbus than at any time since." For Martin, that realization is "provocative," "deeply disturbing," and "even revolutionary." To no surprise, Martin's findings fed the conservative press who argued that because of the (supposed) sins of their earliest ancestors, Native North Americans today lack authority to occupy the moral high ground on environmental issues. Martin's ideas have found support and reached a wide audience for over thirty years, but how well do they stand up today?

For well over a century, the consensus in the scientific community has been that Paleoindians, the ancestors of today's American Indians, wandered eastward into North America from northeastern Asia. But among American Indians outside the scientific community, that idea has not met with universal acceptance. Some have taken issue with the idea that their ancestors came initially from Asia. Asked about the origin of the world and human beings, or about the migrations of their ancestors, Indians have sometimes responded that their communities were never anywhere other than where they were at the moment the question was posed. Their ancestors, they said, came into the present world from worlds preceding and beneath the current one, through mouths of caves or from holes in the ground. Other native people believed they had migrated from the east, west, or elsewhere. Some living in the interior of the continent thought that their ancestors once lived far away on the shores of salty seas. In days before they had incorporated European ideas of their origins into their own, American Indians answered questions about their origin and historical movements in as many different voices as there were nations with separate cultures....

[Nat Whilk]

Before those of us with evidence that supports Jonah's claim bother posting that evidence here, could we get some sort of assurance from you that you won't delete posts simply because they disagree with you?

[Karlsfini]

I guess you're right Brad. Apparently he is the stupidest -- for now. Pretty soon someone will come along and dethrone him. Stupidity seems to be infinite.

Any chance of hearing more about Kate G's unwrung withers?

[RT]

I used to hold out for Cal Thomas being the Stupidest Man Alive (even over luminaries like Luskin and Robert J. Samuelson), but I gotta admit, Jonah Goldberg looks like the real deal.

[anne]

Kate's anatomy of neurosis is wonderful, and I will refer to it often or as often as I descend to my hunted look :)

[Gene O'Grady]

Has Mr. Goldberg ever travelled in the West? To anyone with eyes it's pretty clear that there are some kinds of country that could support forests and others where big trees clearly can't have grown for millenia, the kind of country that actual observors like the 19th century General Sully (son of the painter) called "hell with the fires out" or Juanita Brooks referred to as "the place where the Lord dumped what was left over after he made the world."

[Karlsfini]

This is incredibly interesting to me because of research I'm doing in a related area.

I only wish Goldberg didn't have to be involved. He's only good for comic relief.

Anne, my understanding from a Russian "scientist" who said he knew what he was talking about (how's that for an irrefutable source?) is the latest thinking is there were other, more important causes than man for the great extinctions.

This is because humans were so few (in N. America)and their weapons so puny, while the herds were vast and far-flung. Also, it apparently happened so quickly -- relatively. I think the search is now for disease that may have decimated the herds. Humans may have killed off the last few.

Also,almost none of the animals appear to have been butchered.

I'm not going to be able to be back today, but I'm hoping that like yesterday, people who know what they're taking about will have lots to say on this.

[mwg]

Jesus, Nat, just post it. If Brad deletes it then you can whine about that. I personally would like to see a dfense of Goldberg's claim that the Indians burnt the Great Plains to hunt buffalo.

I thought Tim Burke gave as good a defense of Goldberg as he deserves. Goldberg's position may be defensible, but Goldberg's support for that position is laughably incompetent.

[Nat Whilk]

Sorry, mwg, it's not worth my time to post a defense if Brad's just going to vaporize it like he's done in the past. (If you think he hasn't done so in the past, check out Brad's previous "stupidest man alive" item and note the comments that reply to comments now nonexistent.)

[paul]

The Annie Hall reference eludes me, but I appreciate including Mallard Fillmore in the same list as Jacoby and the RNC.

[Buce]

There's a fund of lore on this topic down the street from you at the School of Forestry, or whatever they call it these days. There's a deep rooted cultural gap on the topic of fire in forests. Forest folks have long recognized that fire is a component of ecosystem; the public traditionally has seen fire as a bad thing (call it 'the Disney model'. One consequence: a standoff which led to a buildup of underbrush, which led to bigger, nastier fires. Similarly, Nature's Way of restoring Douglas Fir was to burn the slope to the ground and start over. Jonah seems to have fallen for the traditional Disney model here.

[anne]

There is neurosis and neurosis :)

http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=&title2=ANNIE%20HALL%20%28MOVIE%29&reviewer=Vincent%20Canby&pdate=&v_id=2547&reviewer=Vincent%20Canby

April 21, 1977

Annie Hall
By Vincent Canby

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) stands in front of an orangey sort of backdrop and tells us, the movie audience, the joke about two women at a Catskill resort. "The food," says the first woman, "is terrible." "Yes," the second woman agrees, "and the portions are so small."

This, says Alvy Singer, is just about the way he feels about life. It's not great—in fact, it's pretty evenly divided between the horrible and the miserable—but as long as it's there, he wants more....

[wcw]

Troll extermination is simply good editing.

I notice you've already moved from "evidence" to "defense". By the time you post, I guarantee it will be "troll".

Thanks for the good post, Brad; that hooey about state subsidy of education had me worried.

[Kate G]

I'm incredibly flattered to have been front paged. I would cry, but that would be...well...you know.

But despite having had my say rather prominently I think there are still things to be said, Nat whilk seems to think so. So have at it Nat. I'd like to see a Defense of Goldberg's thesis--but the whole thesis, not just the cherry picked and, alas, utterly misleading "Indians burnt the great forests into great plains." I'd like to see support for the *whole* argument which is, as Anne pointed out, somewhat different.

As Anne pointed out Goldberg's facticity is part of the "they all did it" "no moral high ground argument"

Of course the argument that because Indians *were not* environmentalists--or didn't love bunnies, or didn't sing to the wind, or whatever it was isn't an argument against environmental thinking or environmental politics at all.

When my evangelical sister-in-law says to me that she is going out to give food and needed services to the poor because that is what Jesus would have done is it really relevant for me to point out that I don't believe in the historical Jesus? If I said it to her would she slap her forehead and say "wow! I never thought of that! If Jesus didn't exist I guess I don't have to go out on a dark night and bring food and comfort to the afflicted. Great! now I can play bingo instead."

So go for it, defend Jonah's argument.

Kate G

[Nat Whilk]

wcw: I used the word "defense" because that's what mwg said he'd like to see, although the distinction between "defense of X" and "evidence supporting X" seems like one with little difference.

As for troll extermination simply being good editing, it's hard to argue with that, but when you consider posts that disagree with you as trolls by definition, what you end up with is an Amen chorus, something I thought Berkeley was famous for considering uninteresting.

[Nat Whilk]

Kate G: Unless you are Brad's alter ego, it's not your interest in seeing a defense that matters. Brad's the one with his finger on the delete key.

[Kate G]

there's a world of difference between a "defense of X" and "evidence supporting X." I'm also not sure what "X" is here. If its "Indians, they were human, they had an effect on the local ecology" that has been pretty well argued by lots of other posters. If its "disney is terrible" I think you won't get too much argument either. But what is *your* X?

Go for it. I'm not Brad's alter ego but [picks self off floor and resumes typing] but that shouldn't stop you.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

"Brad's the one with his finger on the delete key."

I'm curious to see what you've got. If Brad deletes it, and you want me to, I'll post it at http://allintensivepurposes.blogspot.com with links here.

[anne]

What and eventually who made the Great Plains ecology from the last ice age on, strikes me as a marvelous mystery to fathom. During the last ice age, the advancing freezing sheets wiped out earth worms through Canada and well south. Now, worms may not be much thought of other than by other worms and robins, but worms are prime digestors of organic debris. Worms far enough south lived through the ice age and went about munching through fields and forests and clearing the land. Slowly, ever so slowly they moved north and are still moving north. Look beneath you as you walk about a Canadian forest and notice that fallen tree leaves are as a carpet. The leaves last indefinitely for there are yet no worms. South, forest floors are clean. But, south forest floor before earth worms must also have been carpeted with debris and debris in forests beyond and beneath the rain forest regions burns for any number of reason :)

[anne]

Ecosystems can be ever so subtle. There have in recent years been locust infestations in Africa, but I remember wondering why not here? Why are there no locusts about the Great Plains?

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F10E16FC355B0C708EDDAD0894DA404482

April 23, 2002

Looking Back at the Days of the Locust
By CAROL KAESUK YOON

Sweeping across North America, flying hordes of Rocky Mountain locusts were once an awesome and horrifying sight, huge glittering clouds of insects laying waste countless acres of crops. Throughout the 1800's, the whirring swarms periodically ravaged farm fields from California east to Minnesota and south to Texas.

The locusts were easy to please, eating barley, buckwheat, melons, tobacco, strawberry, spruce, apple trees -- even fence posts, laundry hung out to dry and each other.

When women threw blankets over their gardens, the locusts devoured the blankets then feasted on the plants. Farmers lit fires, blasted shotguns into the swarms and scoured their fields with so-called hopperdozers, large metal scoops, smeared with tar or molasses to grab as many of the offenders as possible. But it was all to no avail.

In her book ''On the Banks of Plum Creek,'' Laura Ingalls Wilder recalls the horrid feeling of the huge insects clinging to her clothes, writhing and squishing beneath her bare feet and the sound of ''millions of jaws biting and chewing'' as the locusts destroyed her family's wheat fields in Minnesota.

In 1875 the species formed the largest recorded locust swarm in the history of humankind, 1,800 miles long and 110 miles wide, equaling the combined area of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. Thousands of farm families threw in their shovels and gave up.

A mere 28 years later, this seemingly indestructible enemy vanished. The last collection of a live Rocky Mountain locust was made 100 years ago, in 1902.

Now a century after the last entomologist laid hands on one of these squirming, flitting creatures, scientists say they are beginning to piece together the story of how the species may have disappeared. While still far from consensus, researchers are finding clues in places like remote glaciers and farmers' planting records in the 1880's.

''When it comes to extinction, we all hear about species that are taking a nose dive,'' said Dr. William Chapco, evolutionary biologist at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. ''But a species that was so plentiful at one time, that is no longer with us, that's a real mystery.'' ...

For the most part, researchers have looked to large-scale environmental changes. Some have blamed the disappearance of buffalo, suggesting that bison wallows may have been a critical habitat for the locusts. Others suggest the reduction in American Indian populations and their use of controlled fires may have led to habitat changes that brought on the locusts' decline. But these theories do not hold up under scrutiny, said Dr. Jeffrey A. Lockwood, entomologist at the University of Wyoming, and others....

[Grant]

The Annie Hall reference: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_041604_mcluhan.html

[wcw]

The "tuff" in northern forests does not last indefinitely, but its decomposition is indeed extremely slow, making them a very distinct ecosystem from the European ones to which most Americans, being culturally European, are used.

Worms are not moving north so much as they are gradually moving out from watercourses, where they are used by fishermen as bait and dumped as "beneficial" organisms.

If you like northern forests in their original glory, worms are something of a problem. The University of Minnesota, among others, will set you straight on the problems that native vegetation there has when the tuff is gone.

Nat, with four posts that boil down to the single word, "waah," I believe you have both proven my prediction as well as provided empirical data that Brad does not, alas, very assiduously exterminate trolls. Better luck next time.

[John Browning]

I have no particular view on the issue at hand, but I am curious… Why limit the distinction to the stupidest man alive? Is this an implicit admission that, on a historical scale, he may not be all that stupid – and that modern times have become diminished in stupidity as in so many other things? Or just a failure to think more broadly?

[Anna Haynes]

When I encountered a similar situation (saw strange assertion, asked for the reference, was directed to the book, which said no such thing) and asked if a correction would be forthcoming, I was told that since the claim was made in a column (which engaged in humorous hyperbole elsewhere) it didn't have to be true.

It's an inherent contradiction - any business needs to present a good appearance to its customers, to give them confidence in the product, to de-emphasize its flaws - but when its (platonic ideal) product _is_ truthfulness...

[Barkley Rosser]

A curious irony is that the place that Goldberg spoke, the University of Wisconsin, is near that boundary between where forests naturally occur because of sufficient precipitation and where they do not because precip is insufficient. That is one of the areas where fire does make a difference. The UW Arboretum has the famous Curtis Prairie that is burned each spring (not fall) in imitation of Indian practices, in order to maintain it from getting full of trees. But this went on only in a fairly limited zone. It did not go on further west.

BTW, the Curtis Prairie fire was the one that Disney used for his movie about the Prairie, forget its title (not Bambi though).

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=4450&offset_finder=1&u=900

Worm-eating Warbler
New York City--Central Park, The Loch.

Yummm :)

[mwg]

You won't post your defense of Goldberg, but how many posts can you make saying you can't post it? How seriously should you be taken?

They burn the prairie in my neighborhood, too; I don't live too far from the UW Arboretum.

[Stlinquirer]

Somewhat off-topic or perhaps it's more the opposite of this topic but did anyone notice the sudden reappearance of the semblance of grown-up Republicanism. Here's one grown-up Republican, Paul Craig Roberts, almost an anti-Jonah if you will (ah - now, that's a mental image - having them somehow meet and having Jonah and Roberts disappear in a blaze of unholy subatomic fury. Anyway, here's the link, and boy is Roberts shrill:

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02062006.html

He has also recently defended Al Gore (I believe the headline actually may have read Al Gore is right) on the NSA spying issue. so George Bush must really have him really unhinged but I think he hits on a potential key frame of what's going on.

1) One key purpose of FISA was to facilitate as expiditiously as possible the surveillance of theats to the US (read in the current context, terrorists), even allowing for after the fact surveillance.
a)FISA was further updated after 9/11 to make it even easier
to get survelliance started and approved.
2) The other key purpose of FISA was to prevent the use of such surveillance for political purposes, to silence critics, or for personal enrichment.

Thus, if one is expressly trying to get around FISA, the very strong implications is that one is either trying to prevent the surveillance of terrorists or one is not actually trying to catch terrorists but is instead trying to use surveillance for purposes that are expressly forbidden, unConstitutional, and contrary to the fundamental values of our nation and its people.

Powerful stuff.

[Bruce Garrett]

"Well, I have Shepard Krech III of Brown University right here in email..."

There's a scene from Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" that comes to mind...

[RT]

Another guy in the vein of Paul Craig Roberts is William S. Lind, a very conservative writer, knowledgeable about 4th-generation war, who has been a major critic of Bush's Iraq adventure. Here's a for-instance:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind87.html

[Ken Muldrew]

I was in the group that posted (and got unposted) yesterday on the topic of, “Indians are people; they used the technology that they had to make their lives easier and affected their environment in the process”. I had no desire to defend Goldberg, having only experienced him in the snippet that Brad provided. Kate G convinced me that there was even less profit in seeking out further essays by Goldberg. But as Anne points out, the formation of the great plains (including the extent of environmental change caused by the Indians) is a fascinating subject. The point I tried to make yesterday on this topic was that throughout the prairies of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, there is a layer of charcoal that bears witness to extensive, sustained fires from about 6000 years ago. The most likely hypothesis is that these fires were maintained by humans (over a period of decades—this wasn’t one big fire that ran across a continent). The literature on this is from the 60s (as near as I can remember, it might have been earlier) so it would take some time in a library to find references (longer than this thread will be around, anyway). I didn’t think it was controversial but the quote from Krech shows that it may well be.

Trees and forests will grow anywhere on this bald prairie until you get into Palliser’s triangle in the shadow of the Rockies. But this is boreal forest; it’s very different from the forests of the East.

It is certainly true that grazing and human-influenced fires were responsible for *maintaining* the extensive prairies in Canada prior to the European arrival. The Europeans who first made contact with the plains Indians found them starting and maintaining grass fires on a large scale (a practice that continued for more than a century after this contact, but prior to contact there had already been a vast movement of people Westward, so this burning could have been as much political as ecological). The notion that the original burning of the Western forests to create rangeland for bison has no support whatsoever, but because bison range so far in immense herds, it’s entirely possible that fires to maintain the grassland were carried out to renew the fresh growth that bison prefer.

One last query: Anne, where in Canada do leaves last forever?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/28/science/earth/28WORM.html?ex=1382677200&en=d745f6275dce7b2c&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

October 28, 2003

Researchers Build a Case for Earthworm's Slimy Reputation
By ANNE MINARD

No one would argue that earthworms are cute. But to most people, they are benign and helpful creatures — fertilizers of the garden, aerators of the soil, indispensable fishing companions. "Earthworms are truly nature's little farmers," goes one common view, this one on the Web site of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, "plowing the soil and fertilizing at the same time!"

But for a growing body of researchers, the traditional view of earthworms is giving way to a much more ominous one. Most earthworms common in the United States are exotic intruders from Europe, Asia or South America, these scientists point out.

Their research suggests that earthworms become voracious and destructive when they invade forests, often in ever-widening circles around ponds — where for decades fishermen have been dumping unused worms in the mistaken belief that they help the ecosystem.

Now, scientists are mounting a counterattack. At the end of this week, two dozen biologists from the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada and Russia will gather in Athens, Ga., to outline the earthworm problem and propose solutions. They expect to plan papers for presentation next summer at an international conference on soil zoology in Rouen, France, and they hope to sound a warning for soil researchers.

Nobody is proposing to remove earthworms where they are already established. That would be daunting, or impossible, said Dr. Paul Hendrix, a professor at the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia and the organizer of the conference. But it may be feasible, he said, to shield other areas.

"I like to see pristine areas that have not yet been invaded," he said. "Seems like there's some intrinsic value in having those around, if we can."

Scientists believe that earthworms were once native to North America, but most died off when the northern half of the continent was buried under glaciers.

Small populations lingered in pockets of warmer soils, in the southeastern United States and along the Pacific Coast. Now most earthworms in the country are descended from immigrants....

[Lawrence]

Just a small post on this. There was also a woodland buffalo. The very last one was killed in Werst Virginia in 1840. Its primary forage was a buffalo grass that grew in woodland meadows. The grass too was also thought extinct but a small patch of it was discovered in West Virginia in the 1980's. I guess the intresting thing here is that you had native americans who adapted to an eastern forest, plains, and western sea coast environments. How can you say the plains indians were the only ones to "create" a prairie? Of course if that technology was so evidently useful for some, then why didn't it stretch further. I mean why weren't the Iriquois doing it. They after all were especially adept at picking up new ideas.

[Lawrence]

Just a small post on this. There was also a woodland buffalo. That very last one was killed in Werst Virginia in 1840. Its primary forage was a buffalo grass that grew in woodland meadows. It too was also thought extinct but a small patch of it was discovered in West Virginia in the 1980's. I guess the intresting thing here is that yoppu had native americans who adapted to an eastern forest, plains, and western sea coast environments. How can you say the plains indians were the only ones to "create" a prairie? Of course if that technology was evident, then why didn't it stretch further. I mean why weren't the Iriquois doing it. They after all were especially adept at picking up new ideas.

[anne]

Leaf litter where there are no worms lasts not indefinitely :) but time enough that there is always a covering.

[Tad Brennan]

Brad--

Good move promoting Kate Gilbert to the front page. She has been writing some top-notch stuff.

And while y'all are yacking about Annie Hall, she slipped one right past you with that bit from Hamlet (III.ii.243).

Nice work, KG.

[Ken Muldrew]

It's pretty dry in the West, so leaves dessicate and get pulverized into dust rather quickly. But I've never considered that there might not be earthworms crawling around in the rich loam that is all around. I'll be sure to dig down in search of them from now on. Thanks for passing on that surprising (to me, anyway) tidbit.

Lawrence: As well to ask why the Plains Indians didn't adopt agriculture. Different climates, geography, flora and fauna, etc. That some technologies didn't spread across the continent doesn't mean they weren't used in some locations. Also, there is a Wood Bison in Northern Canada (perhaps different from the Woodland Buffalo that you mention), though the greatest numbers are of Plains Bison and hybrids. Their range was vast: I've seen piles of Bison bones right up at the Columbia Icefields (deep within the Rockies). Plains Bison have no problem living in the Boreal Forest; they just preferred the plains when they were available.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/28/science/earth/28WORM.html?ex=1382677200&en=d745f6275dce7b2c&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

One presenter at the Georgia conference will be Cindy Hale, a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota at Duluth who has written her dissertation on exotic earthworm invasions in sugar maple forests. Ms. Hale said that in soil squeezed and pounded by cultivation, worms can indeed help aerate the ground by burrowing. Their digestive processes break down nutrients, making them more accessible to growing plants.

But those same actions can damage pristine ecosystems. In some cases — when earthworms' droppings are denser than soils — the worms can actually compact the forest floor.

The invasions have another particularly severe effect on the ground. Normally, fallen leaves make a thick, spongy carpet that is crucial to the forest. The leaf litter serves the forest as both insulation and as a storage system. It teems with the micro-organisms that will break down fallen leaves and other organic matter into the fertilizer that will foster new growth in the spring.

But invasive worms eat away the leaf litter and change the chemical and biological properties of forest floors, to the point that some native plants can no longer live there, according to Ms. Hale and other experts.

Ms. Hale speaks from experience. "I started a worm farm when I was a kid at my house," she said. "Now our oak woods is nothing but buckthorn."

The transformed forests of Ms. Hale's childhood exemplify the long-term effects wrought by invasive worms.

Like them, buckthorn is an invader, and it lives where worms have made the conditions right.

The problem goes far beyond Minnesota, experts say. Michael Gundale, who is now pursuing a doctorate at the University of Montana, wrote his master's thesis at Michigan Technological University about invasive worms' effects on the rare goblin fern in northern hardwood forests.

He found that at least one species of the worm grazes on fungus associated with the fern's roots. The fungus and the roots normally engage in an underground partnership to improve the pull of water and nutrients from the soil.

Without the fungus, the plant loses a biological edge....

[anne]

HAMLET: This play is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o'that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5340&offset_finder=1&u=24039

Worm-eating Warbler Singing
New York City--Central Park, North Woods.

Talk about an intricate ecosystem, imagine Central Park :) Imagine over 100 species of warbler alone.

[anne]

http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=&title2=ANNIE%20HALL%20%28MOVIE%29&reviewer=Vincent%20Canby&pdate=&v_id=2547&reviewer=Vincent%20Canby

Annie Hall

Alvy, who grew up as a poor Jewish boy in Brooklyn in a house under a Coney Island roller coaster, is chronically suspicious and depressed. It may have started when he was nine and first read about the expanding universe. What kind of faith can you have if you know that in a couple of billion years everything's going to fly apart? With the firm conviction that the scheme is rotten, Alvy becomes a hugely successful television comedian somewhat on the scale of—you can guess Woody Allen....

[derrida derider]

This is very similar to the course of events in Australia.

A few years ago there was fierce discussion in the political, not scientific, arena, about our Aborigine's use of fire in grasslands. It was the same sequence of events - some right wing commentators brutally simplified and exaggerated the existing research in an attempt to "discredit" PC pomo academics - most of whom existed in said commentator's head (mind you, IMO the noble savage view is not yet dead on either right or left).

The real irony is the most prominent populariser of these issues (the effects of Aboriginal practice on Australian ecology) - Tim Flannery - is definitely a lefty, as well as a fine scientist.

[howard]

BenG, anyone who thinks that jonah "dismantled" juan cole last year has no credibility as a fact witness.

[anne]

Notice, by the way, what a clever stylist the tearlessly sloe eyed Kate G happens to be. Let her take you on any time, for you will have been well had when she is done :)

[Maynard Handley]

"
Sorry, mwg, it's not worth my time to post a defense if Brad's just going to vaporize it like he's done in the past. (If you think he hasn't done so in the past, check out Brad's previous "stupidest man alive" item and note the comments that reply to comments now nonexistent.)
"
I have here in my hand a list of 205 [or maybe it's 57 as in a different speech] names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department... but it's not worth my time to bother ever letting anyone know exactly who they are.

[Kate G]

I, for one, feel this whole thread has greatly enriched my life if only for the information on Earth Worms. I confess, I held to no romantic notions of noble and ecologically minded savages but I always had a real fondness for earthworms, especially after reading a biography of Darwin a few years ago. I'm really crushed to discover that what I had thought were our friends, albeit spineless and dirt sucking, are really our enemies, or at any rate the enemies of our other "Friends" the trees. I guess that Far Side guy who wrote "There's a hair in my dirt" had it right all along. Nature *is* red in tooth and claw.

Kate G

[Cal]

Good for the Good Professor. He knocked that one right out of the park. Eviscerating conservative hacks is a much better use of his time than trying to defend a Bill Bennett comment (not the man) as he did a couple of months ago.

[anne]

So far as I remember, Charles Darwin noted the rate of sinking of the stones at Stonehenge and figured earthworms turn over the top 6 inches of soil every 20 years. Though earthworms do not see they can discern shapes of leaves so that they eat from the narrow end and do not get stuck by the leaves. Also, dear old native American worms have been slowly moving north since the end of the last ice age. The rate however is possibly 30 yards a year.

[Mitch]

Goldberg seems to want us to believe that the Indians land management was just as irresponsible and destructive as ours has been. But even if the Indians' fires "burned down the forest" in some places, they replaced it with a diverse, productive and sustainable prairie ecosystem.

When the settlers got control of this land, they replaced burning with plowing, which led to a few bumper crops, followed by soil depletion, catastropic erosion, and, eventually, the Dust Bowl. So our treatment of the land is not morally equivalent to what the Indians did.

[Chris Fade Berryhill, Lubbock, Texas]

If you live in the Great Plains of Texas,(like I do) in what used to be the Dust bowl and is rapidly re-becoming it from lack of rain (100+ day drought with no measurable rainfall right now) you would understand why there is not a Great Forest in these parts, nor could there have been unless the environment itself was much changed. Forest fires is NOT the reason we dont have native trees over 15 feet tall. This windswept arid land is IN NO WAY CONDUCIVE to native forestry. Jonah is now working towards recreating the myth that White people Good for Ecosystem, red people bad. What an idiot. I am sure he can quote stats on how a Wal-Mart Parking lot is good for the indigineous animals... Just another stupid paleface who believes "My way or we'll steal your land for a highway"

Jo

[johne]

Anyone who has followed Brad's blog for more than a couple of weeks is well aware of his policy of pruning the comments section. Not many of us support it, in part because of the chink that Nat has now discovered: anyone may speak of the weighty response that they have prepared, demolishing not only Brad's position of the moment, but also the entire DeLong world view. And they would post it forthwith, if only there were any assurance that Brad wouldn't do away with it immediately.

Soon every right-wing web denizen on the web will be claiming to have defeated Brad in single combat, so utterly that it is no wonder that he took down their comment. The proof? Go to the DeLong weblog, and you will search in vain for the truth-teller's name.

And of course, if Brad were to change his policy and no longer delete trolls, all of those right-wingers will indeed leave a screed at each of Brad's posts, and the complainers who are so annoyed at having to scroll past Anne's interesting cut-and-pastes will flee in dismay at the thought of having to jump over genuine obstructionism.

Much better never to have started the process of "shaping" the comments (I believe that's Brad's euphemism) to begin with. But will he listen to our advice? No-o-o-o!

[David Friedman]

It seems to me that that Brad and Jonah get to split the credits on this one. Judging by the email from Krech, Jonah is exaggerating but not inventing the link between human caused fires and the great plains:

"Yet increased precipitation as one moves east makes tree growth far more a reality in the eastern and northern high-grass portions of the Plains, where fire played a greater role maintaining grasslands"

So Brad's initial ridiculing of Jonah as an ignoramous who couldn't tell coastal Massachusetts from South Dakota was wrong--at least as wrong as Jonah's extension of the argument from a portion of the plains to the whole of them.

I should add that all I have seen of Jonah's claim is what Brad summarizes and what Brad quotes, so I may be being unfair to Jonah.