Donald Trump. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley. We are told that because of being blocked on Twitter, or being accused (correctly) for being linked to QAnon, or losing a Simon & Schuster book contract, these three people are victims of “cancel culture.” Like so much else in white American culture, this phrase is an appropriation from African-American culture, according to Merriam-Webster. In that sense, “cancel” means a severing of a relationship, or did. With “culture” appended to it, now it seems to refer almost exclusively to white Americans in power who lose privileges, or who aren’t being sufficiently listened to.

…

In which my shortcomings as a research scientist led to a nice e-mail from the only Nobel Prize winner in my discipline’s history

The Who and the Why

Atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen died last Thursday at the age of 87. His passing was international news, because he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995 with Drs. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina for their pioneering work that explained how stratospheric ozone loss could occur due to human activity. …

The topic of the moment in American politics is “originalism,” on public display at the Amy Coney Barrett hearings. For those of us who grew up in the “Christ-haunted” South, the arguments for originalism sound extremely familiar. And I think there’s a reason why.

The Complicated Hugo Black

Many years ago, when originalism was first gaining traction in conservative circles, I happened to be reading Roger Newman’s excellent biography of famed New Deal Senator and then Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. …

This is what we are bringing down upon our nation by gaslighting a pandemic.

This isn’t the flu. This isn’t an “old people’s disease.” This isn’t just an inconvenience for you. This isn’t a vast left-wing conspiracy to keep you from watching sports in person. This. Is. A. Pandemic.

Younger people as well as older people are dying horrible deaths. This poor man suffered for four months, over three of those months in the hospital. He lost function in both of his shot-through-with-holes lungs, and had a leg amputated before finally dying. Tell his 1-year-old son and 38-year-old widow that his was an “acceptable death.”

This is what our “What, Me Worry?” feigned ignorance in the face of a pandemic is doing.

And has done, and will do even more of…

Life in the Purity Cult

I’m a meteorologist. I shouldn’t have to apologize for that. But everyone in my field does at one time or another. I have a Ph.D. from a famed public university. I did a post-doc at a renowned Ivy League university, and worked in an internationally recognized NASA institute. I do research at a major research university that helps your plane rides be less bumpy, and reduces deaths and damage from windstorms. I’m not “that weather guy on TV,” but I have taught people you may have seen on a national network or two.

But that’s not good enough.

It’s not…

With a look back at the first UGA meteorologist, Josiah Meigs

On the occasion of my receiving the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorship, I thought I’d use my 15 minutes-or-fewer of “fame” to shine a spotlight on the person this professorship is named for. It’s also a chance to shine the beam forward across two centuries to the atmospheric sciences program I’m a part of at UGA, to note some surprising similarities and an amusing contrast between Meigs and myself, and to inquire a little about the changing climate of Athens, thanks to Meigs.

Josiah Meigs Comes To Georgia

The Meigs Professorship honors Josiah Meigs…

When I was a junior in high school in 1982, I had a good day on the American College Testing (ACT) standardized test, one of the gateway tests for college admission. I did a little more prep than my friends. I bought a book and practiced a little bit with it. That was unusual in my middle-class public high school in Birmingham, Alabama. There were no test-prep classes that I knew of. No coaches. No online help; this was 1982. …

Now that I have your attention — no, I’m not addressing nearly 2,000 misconceptions about the meme and saying of the cultural moment. The list is under ten. And the moment may have already passed, while I was busy professoring and school boarding in earnest this fall. I thought it was still worth saying.

But first, a bit about me.

Who Am I?

I was born two months and two days after the more-or-less official end of the Baby Boom. I am the youngest child (by over seven years) of my parents, who were themselves the youngest children in their respective families. …