"Let her make any miserable 'jokes' on social media while watching the games on TV."

"She definitely cannot represent Greece in London."

There's a mysterious drop in malaria-carrying mosquitoes in some parts of Africa, and some say maybe it's because of climate change.

Oh, no! Global warming is bad bad bad! Maybe it's causing Hurricane Irene!

“Irene’s got a middle name, and it’s Global Warming,” environmental activist Bill McKibben wrote Thursday night in The Daily Beast. He argued that this year’s hot Atlantic Ocean temperatures and active spree of hurricanes — coupled with droughts, floods and melting sea ice elsewhere on the globe — are “what climate change looks like in its early stages.”

But what if it's doing something fabulously good?

Patterns of rainfall in these years were more chaotic in these regions of Tanzania and often fell outside the rainy season. The scientists say this may have disturbed the natural cycle of mosquito development.

But the lead author of the study, Professor Dan Meyrowitsch from the University of Copenhagen, says that he is not convinced that it is just the changing climate.

"It could be partly due to this chaotic rainfall, but personally I don't think it can explain such a dramatic decline in mosquitoes, to the extent we can say that the malaria mosquitoes are almost eradicated in these communities."

Global warming — or, as they say, "climate change" (for maximum coverage of any possible condition) — is probably not the cause of the hurricane or the big mosquito drop-off, but those who like to wring their hands about the connection between global warming climate change and anything bad that happens must apply the same kind of reasoning to anything good that happens. Otherwise they won't be able to maintain the pretense that they're all about the science.

"I'm hearing from people, they're in tears there are so many mosquitoes."

Said UW-Madison entomologist Phil Pellitteri.

There are 54 different types of mosquitoes in Wisconsin, he said. "The ones that will make or break a summer we call summer floodwater mosquitoes."

They can lay eggs and those eggs will stay dormant for as long as three years. "It's almost like little time bombs out there," Pellitteri said. Once standing water hits them, they hatch....

"It's just crazy. This is unlike anything we've ever seen before with mosquitoes, that's for sure," said Tom Leonard, assistant store manager at Elliott's Ace Hardware in West Allis.

"I've been doing this for 30 years. This is the first time where almost every customer through the door says, 'Where's your mosquito repellent?'"

We had a terrible encounter with mosquitoes last week in the Kettle Moraine here in southern Wisconsin. But on Monday and Tuesday, we were all the way north, at the Apostle Islands National Seashore, where we went on a long hike through the woods, wore no repellent, and got no bites. Yesterday, we were hiking a little further south, at Morgan Falls and Copper Falls, and though we were able to hike without resorting to repellent, we got a few bites. So people bitch (and itch) about the mosquitoes in Wisconsin, but the northern tier is also Wisconsin. Check it out! We saw some highly scenic places, and though it's the peak of the season, we were often the only or almost the only people there.

When mosquitoes come to the Althouse café...

... they always order elbows.

In the Kettle Moraine.

It's very pretty here, but the mosquitoes are insane.

If we could only look closely enough...

... would we sympathize with the mosquito?

Sports headlines toy with the brains of nonfans.

I've long been annoyed by the NYT blog called "Bats." I was bitten by a bat once and had to get rabies shots. And I've had other run-ins with the leathery-winged fiends. Actually, I love them when they are outside, eating mosquitoes and so forth. I might like reading a blog about bats. But Bats is not about bats. It's about baseball. (Maybe if I cared about baseball, I'd still hate the blog title "Bats," either because it disrespects pitchers or because I would still think it was about bats.)

Now, today, The Washington Post has a front-page teaser: "Do Juicers Belong in the Hall of Fame?" And I'm thinking, so there's an Appliances Hall of Fame? Where is it? What was the first inductee? Refrigerator! I'll bet it's refrigerator! But I click to the article —which is (obscurely) re-titled "Do Juicers Belong in Canton?" — and see that it's about drug users and the Baseball Football Hall of Fame. Oh, I don't know. But if there's an Appliances Hall of Fame, it's scraping to low too let in the juicers.

"Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. I brought some. Here, I'll let them roam around – there is no reason only poor people should be infected."

A really rich man — Bill Gates — would like to scare the bejesus out of you who are not so rich but not as in touch with the life of the poor as he is.

IN THE COMMENTS: I detect 3 themes.

Theme #1: Microsoft sucks. Examples: Jeremy says, "Releasing bugs on an unsuspecting public and leaving them vulnerable to viruses is what Gates has been doing his whole career." And Franco says: "Feeling horribly guilty about his immense wealth and distraught over his failure to prevent viruses with his Windows operating system, Bill Gates is launching his next generation operating platform, Screens, which designed for poor people who can't afford Windows."

Theme #2: Lawsuit! Example: Daryl says:

How is this so different from:

1 - saying "Rich white men don't have to worry about gun violence.

2 - pulling out a handgun

3 - pointing it at the audience

4 - firing blanks

5 - telling people: "LOL JK it was just blanks don't be a drama queen"

???

This was an intentional tort. Punitive damages. Based on his net worth. Bill Gates' net worth.

I'm touching myself just thinking about it.

Theme #3: Damned enviros and their DDT ban.

Important pens. Important insects.

You can't bring a camera onto the golf course when you're a spectator at a PGA event, as I was last Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So I brought a little sketchbook and pen, thinking I might be moved to record something of what I saw and heard, in the style of my old "Amsterdam Notebooks." But ever since the fountain india ink fatally clogged my favorite Mont Blanc pen, I haven't been able to recover the old sketchbook spirit. My passion died with that pen. Here's all that went into the book I carried this past weekend, this little dialogue between my sister and me:

There's a mosquito on that guy's shirt.

If he was cuter, you would help him.

Yeah.

***

Now, I'm mourning once again not only for the Mont Blanc pen that died of fountain india, but the Pelikan pen that I used in law school to take all my notes and write all my exams. I am utterly sure that I would not have done so well without it and that it therefore determined the whole course of my adult life. You can see the beloved Pelikan in my hand here.

And what of that mosquito? Had it landed on a more attractive man, everything would have been different.

There are many pens and many mosquitoes. Most are just another pen or just another insect. But some!

IN THE COMMENTS: Trooper York discovers the theme of the day, and it inspires hysterical laughter.

"The gossamer strands, slowly overtaking a lakefront peninsula, emit a fetid odor, perhaps from the dead insects entwined in the silk."

"The web whines with the sound of countless mosquitoes and flies trapped in its folds."

Millions of social spiders weave an ever-expanding web. Are you horrified, or do you think it's pretty cool?

That conversation about a whole lot of blood.

Another one of Jack Handey's "Deeper Thoughts," read aloud...

You know what's probably a good thing to hang on your porch in the summertime, to keep mosquitoes away from you and your guests? Just a big bagful of blood.

... stirs up memories of a question in another book, "Innumeracy," by John Allen Paulos: What would be the size of a cube containing all the human blood in the world?

I tried to answer, using a reasonable method, thinking about the amount of blood in one person times the number of people in the world, divided by the number of gallons I believed to be in a swimming pool, times what I guessed to be the length of that swimming pool reimagined as a cube. I came up with 40 miles, which was way off, caused in part by getting the first number wrong. (It's 4 quarts, not 4 gallons... obvious now.) The right answer is 870 feet. Amazingly small, yet still insanely huge. Don't worry. If all the blood were in a cube, there would be no human beings to get upset by looking at it.

That reminded me of something I read today about the movie "The Shining":

Stanley Kubrick, known for his compulsiveness and numerous retakes, got the difficult shot of blood pouring from the elevators in only three takes. This would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the shot took nine days to set up; every time the doors opened and the blood poured out, Kubrick would say, "It doesn't look like blood." They had tried shooting that scene for an entire year.

Yeah, well, check out this feminist performance art -- NSFW -- "Red Tide."

Not Christmasy enough for you? Eh... it's red.

"Lost in the Amazon."

Regular readers know -- unless you're skimming... and forgetting... -- that one of my favorite TV shows is "I Shouldn't Be Alive." In fact, this is the only show that I find myself telling other people to watch. (I used to tell people to watch "The Comeback," which is now off the air.) Part of it is that real-life situations can remind you of something that happened on "I Shouldn't Be Alive." Things go awry and you can say, You know, if this was "I Shouldn't Be Alive'... well, you know, all sorts of unfortunate decisions and bad consequences would ensue.

Usually, the characters on "I Shouldn't Be Alive" are hardy, experienced outdoorsmen taking on a tough challenge and running into some bad luck. The new episode, "Lost in the Amazon," is not like that. You have a young couple, fulfilling their dream of seeing the Amazon rain forest, starting out from a lodge, onto what they know know to be a 3-mile hiking path. All they have to do is stay on the path. Like little children, they become charmed by the cute animals they see and totter about pointing at things -- ooh, it's a toucan! -- until they realize they're not on the path. They have a compass, but they've left the map back at the lodge, and instead of preserving their awareness of their starting spot and meticulously exploring the possible ways back to the path or just staying put and waiting for rescue, they decide they're sure which direction on the compass point is the correct one and hike straight into the forest trying to go as far as they can. They trudge on for days, into unmarked forest, completely destroying any chance that people who go out to search for them can possibly find them. They keep going as if they've got a shot at coming out on the other side of the forest, when, if they remember anything about where they are, there could be nothing but 1000 miles of forest ahead of them.

In all the other episodes of the show, the tough guys with problems display an astounding will to live. Horribly crushed leg bones, -70 degree temperatures, an elephant stampede, trapped under a boulder.... they deal with it. "Lost in the Amazon" is different. These characters don't just give up, they get tired of struggling and decide to commit suicide! And their struggle, on the physical level, consists of foot blisters, unclean drinking water, mosquitoes, sleeping outdoors, and -- despite much talk of scary animals like jaguars and snakes -- a herd of little pigs. The man does a decent job of yelling at the pigs to make them go, and the woman has the good idea of straining the water through her bra cup. But mostly, they slap mosquitoes, keep walking (as if it's a solution), and talk about ending it all. They happen to run across a man in a boat who saves them, but this is right before the deadline on their suicide pact, which was premised on the notion I'd rather die than spend one more night in the forest.

I was picturing an alternate version of the couple who realize that they are so deeply lost that they may never get out and decide they will live out their lives in the forest. Build a camp, develop your hunting and gathering skills, and find a way to make life good. Wouldn't you get to the point where you'd look at each other and say Hey, we're Adam and Eve.

"They are making me crazy. They have ruined my life."

It's those terrible not-ladybugs. Remember when you were all ooh! cute! ladybugs!? We know so much better now:

Unlike domestic ladybugs, the multicolored Asian variety likes to keep its polka dots indoors in the winter. In older rural neighborhoods, where houses are not knit tight, only insecticide can hope to keep them out. They swarm by the tens of thousands. Unlike the domestic ladybug, the Asian variety leaves a yellow stain. It can bite. Worst of all, it stinks.

As Michael F. Potter, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, explained: "When the beetles are handled or disturbed in any way, they emit this yellow substance from their leg. It's lady-bird blood. It has a noxious odor."

Or, as Lorene Bowling of Olive Hill, Ky., put it, "They stink something terrible."...

Ruth Hopkins, who lives in Mount Vernon, about 40 miles from Lexington, said she got up several times every night last winter to get her hand-held vacuum and sweep the bugs off the sheets and off her ailing 89-year-old husband.

"I would just take that sweeper and sweep all night," said Mrs. Hopkins, whose home is near the Daniel Boone National Forest. "All winter long, we got no rest. They would drop off the ceiling everywhere."

We have them in Wisconsin, but not anywhere near that bad. They seem to be energized by a warm day after it's been cold, on certain days in the fall and spring. I guess in the south, there are days like that all winter. I suppose with the onset of global warming, we'll be seeing more of these horrible bugs. Is there any solution other than insecticide?

In Asia, the bugs do not winter in dwellings, but land on tall, light-colored rocks and find their way into warm, damp recesses in the stone. When the beetles got to the United States, the white vinyl siding on small buildings and granite or light stone walls on larger ones may have beckoned the same way their native rocks had.

So, usually on warm, sunny autumn afternoons after a hard frost, beetles light on the western and southwestern sides of buildings, favoring light-colored buildings over dark ones, and showing a particular affinity for surfaces with contrasting dark vertical lines - like vinyl siding. When they crawl around in search of warm recesses, they end up inside, in light fixtures or attics for the winter.

I'm going to take that into account the next time I have my house painted. I want to know how dark I need to go to make my house not remind them of a rock in China. The poor darlings are just homesick.

UPDATE: Wouldn't mosquito netting work better than a DustBuster? I'm really disturbed by the idea of repeatedly vaccuuming a sick, old man.

"And when there is an enemy to defame/They cloak their spite in fair religion's name."

Last night, we drove out to Spring Green to see the American Players' production of "Tartuffe," the wonderful 1644 Moliere play about an outrageous hypocrite who dupes a rich man by acting extremely pious. Many things are said about Tartuffe before the character appears on stage, including the fact that he's eating and drinking way too much, so when the character finally appeared, I was surprised to see not a fat man but a scrawny little man. The actor (James Ridge) reminded me of George Carlin.

The theater is out in the woods:



And you have to take a bit of a walk up a hill to get there:



But it's exciting to be out under the stars, and not a single mosquito appeared. They must spray the bejeezus out of the place when the Madisonians are not looking.

With a Moliere play, there's the whole problem of translation. Are you really going to try for the endless rhyming couplets? Some, not all, translations do. We heard the Richard Wilbur translation, which really was quite beautifully and cleverly rhymed throughout. At intermission, whenever I spoke one sentence I felt a strange compulsion to try to say a second sentence that would rhyme. I did resist this impulse.

The theme of religion and the lust for power has a lot of resonance today, so let me leave you with a passage:

These charlatans, I say, whose pilgrim souls
Proceed, by way of Heaven, toward earthly goals,
Who weep and pray and swindle and extort,
Who preach the monkish life, but haunt the court
Who make their zeal the partner of their vice --
Such men are vengeful, sly, and cold as ice,
And when there is an enemy to defame
They cloak their spite in fair religion's name,
Their private spleen and malice being made
To seem a high and virtuous crusade,
Until, to mankind's reverent applause,
The crucify their foe in Heaven's cause.

Toning up the rhetoric, paying attention.

Hey, Sarah Vowell is the new guest columnist at the NYT. I love her hilarious, never-padded writing. I'm immensely enjoying the audio version of her current book "Assassination Vacation." So it's great to see her here.

A taste:

Seeing [Pat] Robertson in that commercial with Bono - and Bono's hair - is a little like listening to Paul Anka's new recording of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." At first, it's jarring to hear the guy who wrote "Puppy Love" for Donny Osmond sing Kurt Cobain's lyrics: "a mosquito, my libido." But listen hard and you can hear what Anka hears. He doesn't hear the ranting of weirdos. He hears the poetry, the architecture of a justifiably standard song like "Autumn in New York," like "Fly Me to the Moon."

See how there's something to see in every phrase? I love that!

Anyway, tucked away in this piece that's mostly about aid to Africa, she has this on topic of replacing Sandra Day O'Connor:

On Monday, anticipating an epic dust-up regarding his new nominee for the Supreme Court, President Bush said he hoped that special-interest groups on both sides would "tone down the heated rhetoric." They shouldn't, though.

This is about the lifetime appointment of a person who will be making life and death decisions for millions of people for decades to come, not about some petty time waster like - come on, again? - flag burning. It's so important that we should agree to melt together on the slopes of a Kilauea of issue-ad spew.

Here's the front-page NYT story about the request to tone down the rhetoric on the Supreme Court appointment. I disapprove of exaggerated rhetoric myself, much as I enjoy selecting the juiciest nuggets of it for blogging purposes. But I do think it's right to argue about who belongs on the Court. It's terribly good for us to engage with this, especially to learn to detect when we are being played and to grasp what matters and what really doesn't. Vowell is correct to flag flag-burning as one of the unimportant issues that are used to manipulate ordinary people while the powerful jockey to get the things they really care about.

This is an excellent time for everybody to pay attention. The President would like you to calm down, sit back, and believe that he's carefully studying all the credentials and will decide whom to nominate based on the highest of principles, at which point you're supposed to boo anyone would would obstruct the slick path to confirmation. But you shouldn't do that.

UPDATE: I note that the Times let Vowell make a huge gaffe. Paul Anka did not write "Puppy Love" for Donny Osmond. Paul Anka was himself a teen idol, circa 1959, and "Puppy Love" was one of his many hits. Donny Osmond simply did a cover version, years later.

The view from Madison.

It's another damp, cool summer day here in Madison. My lewd front-yard mushrooms have re-sprouted. My overgrown hedge is now clipped, but swarming with mosquitoes. It's a good day to hole up inside and make the big push to get my Conlaw exams graded. Monday is the deadline, finally close enough to call up the mental powers that my brain keeps firmly in reserve, try as I might to tap into them earlier. Monday is also the first day of the 5-week summer session I will be teaching to a group--I don't know how large--of students who feel motivated for one reason or another to tackle the course in 2-hour sessions beginning at 8 am, four days a week. How strange it is to cover 5% of the material each day, to wrap one's mind around Marbury not in a week but a day. But we will do it! Instead of just bumbling into the summer day around 10 am, class will already be over, and a sense of accomplishment will cast a golden glow over the rest of the day. (See? I'm an optimist).



So, time for me to engage with some bluebooks. May I recommend the other Madison bloggers over there in the sidebar? Gordon (Venturpreneur) is currently blogging from Germany, and Tonya's blogging from Italy. Nina is now in Madison, as is Jeremy, and both of them have changed the look and the content of their blogs recently. Nina is tapping the rich material of her childhood, growing up in Poland in the 1950s (here, for example), and Jeremy is taking on Ralph Nader ("He may have a monomaniacal narcissistic mental world, but it's not a monomaniacal narcissistic fantasy world")(and scroll up if "Arkanoid" is a topic of interest to you).



UPDATE: John takes issue with Jeremy's assessment of Nader's contact with reality. Let's assume Nader means to lie, as Jeremy contends, when he says "I think I'm going to take more votes away from Republicans than from Democrats." John pointed out that it's such a ridiculous thing to say that even a liar would only say it if he was out of touch with reality.



I've heard two writers recently make the same observation about the difference between writing fiction and writing nonfiction: fiction has to be plausible (and is therefore harder to write). (The writers, heard on C-Span, were Tom Clancy and Tom Wolfe.) The same goes for lying: it has to be plausible. Deliberate liars who are in touch with reality will say believable things. Otherwise, why bother to lie?

Sensual aftereffects of rain.

There is respite from all the rain, and now the front garden is teeming with insects that I'm afraid are baby mosquitoes. If anybody needs fresh chives, I've got them. I don't intentionally grow edible things in my yard. The chives have just lived on from the days when I did try to grow food:



But what are these? They look awfully lewd!


I'm not about to eat the mushrooms that are lolling about in my yard. But are they morels?



UPDATE: Yikes! Diva competition!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tonya posts a relevant literary passages and relays dinner hilarity in the midst of which I said, "I thought my yard should be wearing pants."