Against Happiness: “Sad people are nice. Angry people are nasty. And, oddly enough, happy people tend to be nasty, too.” (The New York Times Magazine)

Rivka, the thoughtful psychologist who writes Respectful of Otters, lambasted psychoanalyst Justin Frank’s armchair analysis of George Bush even more vociferously than I did. Remarkably, Frank wrote back to Rivka to defend himself. I agree with her that his defense is not very convincing, but he joins me in wondering if we don’t have a special abiding interest in this kind of knowledge about our national leaders, particularly with an election looming (particularly with the fate of the earth looming…). On the other hand, I suspect that anyone au courant enough to become concerned on the basis of a psychoanalytic portrait is someone who had already made their mind up on the basis of more conventional evidence, as Rivka agrees.

I have previously written about how much I love year-end best lists, and have sometimes posted lists of pointers to them here. I forgot to mention that I also look forward to the spate of summer reading lists that come out about now, although I am appalled by the suspicion that they owe their proliferation to the fact that many people don’t read for the rest of the year until they are lounging around the pool or the beach on their summer vacation. Rebecca has begun to collect links to summer reading lists here, so I can point you to hers.

“This may be the most important graphic you’ll see in the entire campaign.” (The Washington Monthly)

No Skeeters, No Problem? Not So Fast The New York Times reporter calls an entomologist and environmental ethicist to ask what I venture to say most people who spend any length of time outdoors in summer have asked themselves — “what good are mosquitoes?” and “why shouldn’t there be a world without them?” Being a good environmentalist do-be, I long ago gave up on my fantasy of a world without mosquitoes even though I am exquisitely sensitive to them and am one of the people who are bitten, and bitten severely, when all around me are getting a free ride. I figured that, with the complex web of interconnectedness of all life and all that, the possibility of severe unforseen consequences of eliminating even such a pest ruled out my daydream (apart from the question of whether it is even achievable in the real world…). The scientist suggests that we are reassessing the assumption that it the loss of every species that goes extinct is an environmental catastrophe per se. She says nothing, however, of the slippery slope we enter when we try to be the arbiters of which components of species diversity are dispensible; after all, it isn’t really an issue of how appealing a species is. And, as pointed out, some insect pests, in keeping the human ‘riff raff’ out of wilderness areas, are deemed some of nature’s ‘best conservationists.’ But, if mosquitoes in particular were on the endangered species list, how hard would those among us who are not reverent Jains (the members of which religion reputedly wear surgical masks so that they do not inadvertently kill small flying insects by inhaling them, if the apocryphal stories are true…) work to protect their remaining numbers? I never have and never will use an electric bug zapper in my garden; our tastes run more to citronella candles. But I remain an unabashed fan of DEET when I go into the wilderness…