Newt Gingrich was the subject of much mockery this week when he proposed a permanent lunar colony by the end of his second term. Perhaps he was joking when he said one day it could be the 51st state. But, there are plenty of people who, while they may be dubious of Newt Gingrich's ability to lead us into space, take it as an article of faith that mankind will some day leave the Earth and colonize the moon, then other planets, then move on beyond our solar system to explore and exploit other solar systems.
I, alas, am dubious, though with caveats. First, "some day" is a vague time frame. I'm ill prepared to speculate what mankind might accomplish in, say, 5000 years, let alone 50,000 years, or 5 million years. But, a lot of science fiction envisions our civilization spreading off the earth in this century. Indeed, a lot of science fiction imagined it taking place in the LAST century. Plenty of science fiction imagined us having moon bases and Mars colonies by 1999. By 2012, we were going to be shuttling back and forth to Saturn. I talk to a lot of people at science fiction conventions who feel like, if only politicians would get their priorities straight, we could be setting up shop on Mars by the end of the decade. For now, I'll just say that it's difficult for me to imagine any permanent base of any significance by the end of this century.
Caveat two: "Of any significance." Obviously, we HAVE a space station. We had a space shuttle. We made it to the moon. I don't doubt that China or India or even the US might go back to the moon for a visit as a matter of national pride. Maybe we'll get our act together enough to pay a visit to a nearby asteroid. But the kind of "city of wonders in the sky" space station of science fiction is difficult to foresee within the next 100 years. "Cramped RVs parked somewhere between here and the moon," maybe.
Caveat three: I'm only talking about human space flight. Obviously, we've done amazing stuff with rovers, probes, and telescopes. I anticipate the trend will continue. We might be stuck on the planet, but our tools can really travel.
That third caveat, by the way, is the real reason I don't think humans will be heading for another planet anytime in the coming century. The weak point in "manned space flight" is the "manned" part. We simply aren't engineered well for traveling to another planet. Humans have absolutely horrific fuel consumption, we generate a tremendous amount of waste, we are overly complicated and prone to breakdowns. Our sensory arrays are a mess. Our one tiny advantage over machinery is our ability to behave erratically. Mars rovers aren't likely to head for a funny-looking rock on a whim, kick it over, and by chance find some kind of martian worm. But, while our ability to behave randomly and benefit from lucky outcomes may have a huge evolutionary advantage here on earth, outside the bubble of our own biosphere, it's more likely to get us killed.
Consider interstellar travel. When science fiction authors contemplate it, they have to resort to magic to move humans through the void at speeds not just faster than light, but faster than boredom. If it takes the Enterprise five years to get from star to star, Kirk doesn't get to sleep with too many alien babes before he becomes to fat and bald to be a player. Some science fiction writers do tackle this issue by introducing generations ships which are basically self contained worlds. But, trying to move a human biosphere across the void requires a stunning amount of resources compared to moving a robot the size of my cell phone from here to another planet.
Any argument I've ever heard for us leaving the earth seems either self-negating or better tackled by leaving humans out of the equation.
Popular arguments are:
1. We have to leave because a collision is inevitable. We need only look at our moon to see that massive collisions do occur in our neck of the woods. But, unless the object is truly massive, I don't see how evacuating the planet is a superior approach to using robots to intercept the threatening object and steer it away.
2. We will find some resource out there that not here.
Suppose the thing we desire is information. Machines can go wherever we need them to and gather the data we need. If a machine can't go there, we can't go there. Suppose the thing we need is some exotic mineral. The main problem here is that we understand the periodic table pretty well, and any exotic mineral we need is either here already, or else so unstable that it's going to vanish from wherever else it might be found. If we understand chemistry at all, then the same building blocks of nature are going to be found all over the universe. They don't have anything in the Andromeda galaxy we can't put our hands on here. Of course, some matter is more interesting than other. Suppose we get lucky enough to discover life on another world, either Mars or Europa. Yay! The impulse to go and study would be strong.
And that impulse would absolutely have to be resisted. Because if we do find another ecosystem, I can think of nothing more irresponsible than to place a human in the middle of it. Suppose we flew a spaceship filled with humans to Europa. It's a well built machine, with an artificial ecosystem capable of supporting us. Since we can't pack enough food for the journey, we probably have some sort of algae and brine shrimp farming going on, possibly in combination in recycling our waste. Now imagine this ship gets whacked by a rock the size of softball a mile above the surface, and we suddenly spray brine shrimp and algae and human excrement over a hundred mile swath of ice. Then the ship smashes into the surface, and the liquefied remains of the crew seep into the cracks we've opened in the ice. We would have forever contaminated the very thing we went there to examine, an ecosystem untouched by man.
3. We have to leave our planet because we'll outgrow it. You don't have to be blind to see that we are placing severe ecological stress on our planet. We are altering the atmosphere, acidifying the oceans, and creating entire islands of waste plastic. We suck nutrients from the soil by growing crops in places they were never designed to grow. And, we're starting to get really packed in. It's tempting to look at Mars, and dream of a little elbow room. But, honestly, is the fact that we've screwed up our current ecosystem a good argument for leaving it behind, the way Newt Gingrich might abandon a sick wife? Or, couldn't the money and energy spent on a hypothetical mission to Mars be used instead to clean up some of the crap we've dumped in our seas?
The fact is, our current technology is capable of building a space probe and sending it to another solar system. Perhaps the journey would take fifty thousand years. Obviously, we aren't going to spend money on a project that requires so long for a payoff. But, the weak link here is the human need to see results of a project in our own lifetime. On the scale of the universe, fifty thousand years is just a blip.
Perhaps one day we'll beat death, and a race of immortal humans will be able to plan projects that span thousands of years. If not us, then the better designed beings that follow us.
For now, we're stuck with this world, and we're stuck with our fellow men. I advise we take care of both.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Friday, January 06, 2012
Answering the Polygamy Equivalency
Yesterday in New Hampshire, Santorum explained his opposition to same-sex marriage by equating it to polygamy:
Santorum retorted, “Are we saying that everyone should have the right to marry?”
When the audience member told him yes, he shot back, “So anyone can marry can marry anybody else, so, if that’s the case, then everyone can marry several people.”
I hear this a lot, and I always find it a bit perplexing. It seems to be arguing that, if we allow monogomous gay marriage (which is growing in societal acceptance), it opens the door to polygamy (which is opposed by a much wider margin).
But, it doesn't seem to me that gay marriage is the real slippery slope to polygamy. Instead, the slippery slope would be "everyone can marry several people," which is certainly legal and widely practiced by some heterosexuals. Newt Gingrich has married three women, John McCain, two, and Rush Limbaugh, the paragon of all values conservative, is on wife #4. Admittedly, they obey the legal nicety of abandoning their old wives before remarrying, but still, if a heterosexual person wants two, four, or ten spouses, our laws allow it, as long as it's sequential. Isn't the social acceptance of multiple sequential spouses far more likely to lead to polygamy than monogamous homosexual marriage?
Again, I think that people who worry that homosexuals might destroy the meaning of marriage are ignoring the reality that heterosexuals have already devalued it substantially on their own. Homosexual enthusiasm for the institution might be society's best hope of making it mean something again. I suspect that the first generation of legally wed gays will fight extra hard to make their marriages work, since they won't want to give gay marriage opponents the satisfaction of saying, "See, I told you this wouldn't work."
Santorum retorted, “Are we saying that everyone should have the right to marry?”
When the audience member told him yes, he shot back, “So anyone can marry can marry anybody else, so, if that’s the case, then everyone can marry several people.”
I hear this a lot, and I always find it a bit perplexing. It seems to be arguing that, if we allow monogomous gay marriage (which is growing in societal acceptance), it opens the door to polygamy (which is opposed by a much wider margin).
But, it doesn't seem to me that gay marriage is the real slippery slope to polygamy. Instead, the slippery slope would be "everyone can marry several people," which is certainly legal and widely practiced by some heterosexuals. Newt Gingrich has married three women, John McCain, two, and Rush Limbaugh, the paragon of all values conservative, is on wife #4. Admittedly, they obey the legal nicety of abandoning their old wives before remarrying, but still, if a heterosexual person wants two, four, or ten spouses, our laws allow it, as long as it's sequential. Isn't the social acceptance of multiple sequential spouses far more likely to lead to polygamy than monogamous homosexual marriage?
Again, I think that people who worry that homosexuals might destroy the meaning of marriage are ignoring the reality that heterosexuals have already devalued it substantially on their own. Homosexual enthusiasm for the institution might be society's best hope of making it mean something again. I suspect that the first generation of legally wed gays will fight extra hard to make their marriages work, since they won't want to give gay marriage opponents the satisfaction of saying, "See, I told you this wouldn't work."
Monday, January 02, 2012
The Hazards of Love, Explained
I've been obsessing over the Decemberist's album the Hazard's of Love. It's a fantastic fairy tale love story told as a rock opera. Most of the story is relatively easy to follow, but there are some gaps that are left open to interpretation. I thought I'd take my stab at interpretting things. If you haven't heard the album, you can probably stop reading right here. I'm addressing this post to people familiar with the work who may be puzzled by certain plot points.
The grand arc of the story is easy. A maiden named Margaret rides into the forest and finds a wounded fawn. She attempts to help the fawn and before her eyes it changes shape into a man, William. Margaret and William share a night of passion. When she returns home, she longs for him, and soon discovers she's pregnant. She returns to the forest and reunites with William, who is deeply in love with her. But, William is the adopted son of the Queen of the Forest, and the Queen is jealous that her child's heart now belongs to someone else. A villianous rake who has murdered his own children passes through the woods, discovers Margaret, and kidnaps her. The Queen is eager to remove Margaret from the forest, so she helps the Rake escape by crossing a raging river. William chases after them, but his horse is afraid to enter the river. Having no time to build a boat, and with the waters too wild to swim, William begs the river to calm down and not drown him, and, in exchange, when he returns, the river can have his life then. The river accepts the bargain; William kills the Rake and when the villain enters hell he's greeted by the ghosts of his dead children who will torment him for all eternity. Alas, all does not end happily ever after, for William still has his bargain with the river, which floods the fortress where he and Margaret have reuinited. As the waters rise, William and Margaret accept thier fate and exchange wedding vows, so they will be united in marriage even in death.
The album contains these major mysteries:
1. At the end of the second track, "The Hazards of Love Part One," a woman can be heard shouting. What she shouts is tough to say, but I believe it is the Queen shouting "You'll feel my wrath, yes!" It's definitely a pissed off shout, and it's deep female voice, which matches that of the Queen. Musically, I think it's a tip of the hat to Pink Floyd's The Wall, where a shout leads into "Another Brick in the Wall"
2. Based on lyrics in the same track, there's some debate as to whether Margaret is a prostitute. I think, given the setting of a "bower," that she is instead a Lady in Waiting, who does entertain men, but chastely. I also think that the "sister" who comes to visit her in the next track is actually the Queen of the forest in disguise. The evidence is that when the "sister" speaks, the Queen's musical theme is playing. When she asks Margaret who the father of her unborn child is, she's searching for confirmation that William has betrayed her trust by falling in love with a human woman. My biggest argument that Margaret isn't a prostitute is that her pregnancy is a scandal to forces her to flee the bower. If the bower is a brothel, as some people argue, then an unwanted pregnancy was probably a pretty run of the mill work hazard, hardly worthy of fleeing into the wilderness to hide.
3. The most controversial claim I'll make is that one of the tracks on the album is out of sequence. Track 8 is The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid. In it, William asks for the freedom to enjoy the night as a man. The Queen agrees, but tells him she'll take his life come morning. However, William certainly seems alive on the rest of the album, so did she not keep her word? Also, William's pleas that he wants to enjoy the night come after he's knocked up Margaret, so he's already been having plenty of fun with his evenings, unless this scene is treated as a flashback or a memory. (In the song immediately before, William and Margaret sleep together beneath a sky full of stars, so perhaps William is dreaming.) In this light, his curse makes sense. The Queen has granted him the freedom to be a man during the night, but during daylight he changes into a white fawn. The Queen did this to ruin his chances of ever finding permanent love with a human woman, but didn't count on Margaret being kinky enough to be turned on by the whole half man/half fawn thing.
4. Another mystery is whether William is the Rake's son. The Rake boasts of murdering his son, burning the body, and burying the ashes in an urn. The Queen tells William that she rescued him from a "cradle of clay." The Queen tells William:
"How I made you
I wrought you
I pulled you
From ore I labored you
From cancer I cradled you
And now: this is how I am repaid?"
"From ore I labored you" could certainly be interpretted that he was nothing but minerals when she found him, which would certainly be the case if he was ash. The beauty of this interpretation is that it makes revenge against the Rake a double revenge. But, despite the poetic justice if it were true, I don't think this interpretation is correct. My main argument would be that the dead boy is singing right along side his sisters during the revenge song. William is one of the distinctive voices on the album, and this boy ain't him. Unless Colin Maloy, the songwriter, says otherwise, I think that William and the burnt son are different people.
5: In the last song, a lot of people seem to feel that William and Margaret are taking a boat back across the river and their ship is sinking, probably because the word "sinking" is actually used.
"Margaret, array the rocks around the hole before we’re sinking
A million stones, a million bones, a million holes within the chinking"
My objection to the boat theory is that William would have to be an idiot to go back to the river, and even more of an idiot to try to take Margeret back to his mother's kingdom. Also, what kind of boat is carrying a million stones? Instead, William has probably been clever enough to think he's not going to go back to the river. But, alas, the river comes to him, flooding the castle where he's rescued Margaret. He has no time to get her to safety. They've retreated to a chamber where they are trying to plug up all the holes so the rising water can't reach them, but the water is gushing through more tiny holes than they can fill. He knows he's brought this fate on her, but tells her that, if they must die, they will die as man and wife.
"But with this long, last rush of air let’s speak our vows in starry whisper
And when the waves came crashing down, he closed his eyes
and softly kissed her."
Thus, death may bring an end to life, but not to love.
Obviously, there's no definitive way of knowing if these interpretations are correct, but I think it's a pretty good mesh with the lyrics. The only remaining point I'm undecided on is whether Margaret is still pregnant when she dies, or if she had the child earlier. In the seventh track, she sings:
"And isn’t it a lovely way
We got in from our play
Isn’t it babe? A sweet little baby"
Is she still pregnant as she's singing this? "A lovely way we got in" could mean that she's pregnant. But, the way she coos "sweet littly baby" makes it easy to imagine she's cradling the child as she sings. If so, what is the fate of the child? It seems odd that it would just vanish from the lyrics. But, I can't see anything that makes a case either way. It's probably the most unsatisfying mystery of the album, since there are no real clues to work with.
The grand arc of the story is easy. A maiden named Margaret rides into the forest and finds a wounded fawn. She attempts to help the fawn and before her eyes it changes shape into a man, William. Margaret and William share a night of passion. When she returns home, she longs for him, and soon discovers she's pregnant. She returns to the forest and reunites with William, who is deeply in love with her. But, William is the adopted son of the Queen of the Forest, and the Queen is jealous that her child's heart now belongs to someone else. A villianous rake who has murdered his own children passes through the woods, discovers Margaret, and kidnaps her. The Queen is eager to remove Margaret from the forest, so she helps the Rake escape by crossing a raging river. William chases after them, but his horse is afraid to enter the river. Having no time to build a boat, and with the waters too wild to swim, William begs the river to calm down and not drown him, and, in exchange, when he returns, the river can have his life then. The river accepts the bargain; William kills the Rake and when the villain enters hell he's greeted by the ghosts of his dead children who will torment him for all eternity. Alas, all does not end happily ever after, for William still has his bargain with the river, which floods the fortress where he and Margaret have reuinited. As the waters rise, William and Margaret accept thier fate and exchange wedding vows, so they will be united in marriage even in death.
The album contains these major mysteries:
1. At the end of the second track, "The Hazards of Love Part One," a woman can be heard shouting. What she shouts is tough to say, but I believe it is the Queen shouting "You'll feel my wrath, yes!" It's definitely a pissed off shout, and it's deep female voice, which matches that of the Queen. Musically, I think it's a tip of the hat to Pink Floyd's The Wall, where a shout leads into "Another Brick in the Wall"
2. Based on lyrics in the same track, there's some debate as to whether Margaret is a prostitute. I think, given the setting of a "bower," that she is instead a Lady in Waiting, who does entertain men, but chastely. I also think that the "sister" who comes to visit her in the next track is actually the Queen of the forest in disguise. The evidence is that when the "sister" speaks, the Queen's musical theme is playing. When she asks Margaret who the father of her unborn child is, she's searching for confirmation that William has betrayed her trust by falling in love with a human woman. My biggest argument that Margaret isn't a prostitute is that her pregnancy is a scandal to forces her to flee the bower. If the bower is a brothel, as some people argue, then an unwanted pregnancy was probably a pretty run of the mill work hazard, hardly worthy of fleeing into the wilderness to hide.
3. The most controversial claim I'll make is that one of the tracks on the album is out of sequence. Track 8 is The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid. In it, William asks for the freedom to enjoy the night as a man. The Queen agrees, but tells him she'll take his life come morning. However, William certainly seems alive on the rest of the album, so did she not keep her word? Also, William's pleas that he wants to enjoy the night come after he's knocked up Margaret, so he's already been having plenty of fun with his evenings, unless this scene is treated as a flashback or a memory. (In the song immediately before, William and Margaret sleep together beneath a sky full of stars, so perhaps William is dreaming.) In this light, his curse makes sense. The Queen has granted him the freedom to be a man during the night, but during daylight he changes into a white fawn. The Queen did this to ruin his chances of ever finding permanent love with a human woman, but didn't count on Margaret being kinky enough to be turned on by the whole half man/half fawn thing.
4. Another mystery is whether William is the Rake's son. The Rake boasts of murdering his son, burning the body, and burying the ashes in an urn. The Queen tells William that she rescued him from a "cradle of clay." The Queen tells William:
"How I made you
I wrought you
I pulled you
From ore I labored you
From cancer I cradled you
And now: this is how I am repaid?"
"From ore I labored you" could certainly be interpretted that he was nothing but minerals when she found him, which would certainly be the case if he was ash. The beauty of this interpretation is that it makes revenge against the Rake a double revenge. But, despite the poetic justice if it were true, I don't think this interpretation is correct. My main argument would be that the dead boy is singing right along side his sisters during the revenge song. William is one of the distinctive voices on the album, and this boy ain't him. Unless Colin Maloy, the songwriter, says otherwise, I think that William and the burnt son are different people.
5: In the last song, a lot of people seem to feel that William and Margaret are taking a boat back across the river and their ship is sinking, probably because the word "sinking" is actually used.
"Margaret, array the rocks around the hole before we’re sinking
A million stones, a million bones, a million holes within the chinking"
My objection to the boat theory is that William would have to be an idiot to go back to the river, and even more of an idiot to try to take Margeret back to his mother's kingdom. Also, what kind of boat is carrying a million stones? Instead, William has probably been clever enough to think he's not going to go back to the river. But, alas, the river comes to him, flooding the castle where he's rescued Margaret. He has no time to get her to safety. They've retreated to a chamber where they are trying to plug up all the holes so the rising water can't reach them, but the water is gushing through more tiny holes than they can fill. He knows he's brought this fate on her, but tells her that, if they must die, they will die as man and wife.
"But with this long, last rush of air let’s speak our vows in starry whisper
And when the waves came crashing down, he closed his eyes
and softly kissed her."
Thus, death may bring an end to life, but not to love.
Obviously, there's no definitive way of knowing if these interpretations are correct, but I think it's a pretty good mesh with the lyrics. The only remaining point I'm undecided on is whether Margaret is still pregnant when she dies, or if she had the child earlier. In the seventh track, she sings:
"And isn’t it a lovely way
We got in from our play
Isn’t it babe? A sweet little baby"
Is she still pregnant as she's singing this? "A lovely way we got in" could mean that she's pregnant. But, the way she coos "sweet littly baby" makes it easy to imagine she's cradling the child as she sings. If so, what is the fate of the child? It seems odd that it would just vanish from the lyrics. But, I can't see anything that makes a case either way. It's probably the most unsatisfying mystery of the album, since there are no real clues to work with.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Favorite Albums I Discovered in 2011
I've been seeing a lot of "Best of" lists in recent days, and been thinking about my own favorite music discoveries of the year. This isn't a "best of 2011" list, since most of the albums and artists I've been listening to recorded their work years ago. But, it was all new to me.
This year marked a significant shift in my music listening habits. Save for a few rare instances, I'm buying 100% of my music online now. As a result, I'm spending a lot more time mixing my own playlists, and I buy a lot of single tracks to fill these in. Gone are the days when I'd have to shell out money for a CD to get one good song. So, this means that if I find an album that holds my attention, it's a really good album.
Probably my favorite album discovery was How We Quit the Forest by Rasputina. Rasputina is progressive cello rock with hints of steampunk and goth. Her literary and historical interests are very strong, and half of the pleasure of listening to Rasputina is researching the obscure historical trivia she's referencing, or else having her sing a song about something that you knew about, but had never known was songworthy until now. Alas, Rasputina is so far ranging in her topics and musical approaches, most of her albums are a mess of stuff that doesn't really fit together. She has an annoying fondness for gimicky, jokey songs that really stop being interesting the second time you hear them. But, her instincts also drive her to write songs with haunting lyrics and beautiful melodies, and can produce songs so perfect they give me songasms.
How We Quit the Forest has only a few joke songs (Onward Christian Soldiers, Diamond Mind, and Dwarf Star). And, as her joke songs go, these are pretty good ones. But, she really goes all out on more serious topics, singing about relationships in The Olde Headboard, senility in Rose K, human cruelty in Herb Girls of Birkenau, and standing by a troubled/sick friend in Sign of the Zodiac. And, if there has ever been a better song, wierder, more perfect song about alienation and love than The New Zero, I can't think of it. Seriously, my friend Mike Edmonston told me about this band last spring, and I've been hooked since the first you-tube video I sampled, a cello driven cover of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here.
In contrast to my online discoveries, I happened to run across Radiohead's albums Amnesiac and Kid A while I was in a thrift store. The CDs were only 99 cent, so picking them up wasn't a huge gamble. I've like Radiohead in small doses, but never really fell in love with their albums before. But both Amnesiac and Kid A are works of art that need to be listened to in thier entirity. They are atmospheric, moody, and haunting, with most of the voice work digitally altered until it's nearly impossible to understand. But, rather than being annoying, the warped voices add to the overall emotion of the albums, and seem to be a statement in themselves about how difficult it is to communicate honestly. I don't use drugs, but these albums give me a feeling of altered consciousness, of sinking into a surreal landscape where the familiar becomes unrecognizable.
While I'd been lukewarm to Radiohead, I've loved the Decemberists since I first heard them, and have nearly all their albums. One I didn't have until recently was The Hazards of Love. It's a concept album, where all the songs blend together to tell the story of a shapeshifting son of the forest who seduces a mortal woman. When I heard about it, it was a bit too fairy-tale for my tastes. Also, I had the bad luck of listening to The Rake's Song out of context, and was just put off by it. It's sung by a man who boasts of murdering his three children after his wife dies so he can return to the life of a wanton bachelor. The Decemberists have a flair for dark humor, but, out of context, this song was too dark even for my tastes.
Now, I've heard it in context and, wow, The Hazards of Love is easily the Decemberist's best album. Ironically, it manages to do this without having any of thier best songs. There's nothing from this album I'm going to pull out and put onto my Decemberist playlist. The songs really only make sense in the context of the other songs. The Rake's Song doesn't work unless it's matched by the revenge song that comes near the end of the album where the spirits of the dead children rise from the water to greet thier murderous father. Many of the catchiest songs echo and thread throughout the work, like the refrain of the title, "The Hazards of Love," or the chorus from the song "The Wanting Comes in Waves." Most of the characters in the musical play are matched with musical themes, and the music will shift from theme to theme as the characters interact. I find myself looking forward to driving places that take more than an hour to get to, so I'll have the chance to listen to the whole album at once, which is really the only way to approach this. Otherwise, it would be like trying to watch a movie in three and four minute snippets.
One last note: My year got off to a good start with Jonah Knight released an EP of songs based on my novel Nobody Gets the Girl. While it seems like that should be on my list of favorite albums, I confess that Jonah really knocked the Nobody soundtrack out of my year end thoughts by putting out an even better album, The Age of Steam: Strange Machines. Steampunk is a growing trend in a lot of media, and some artists embrace of it seems more opportunistic than inspired. But, The Age of Steam is a perfect blend of geeky and creepy and just sounds sincere. You can tell Jonah loves the subjects of time machines, airships, haunted guitars and the restless dead. Also, he does a cover of "Bad Moon Rising" that will make you forget the original version, which had a pop, upbeat melody. Jonah's slow, haunting take really highlights the menace woven through the lyrics. This version really makes going out at night when a bad moon is on the rise sound like a very poor choice.
I feel like I need to note an absense on this list: For the first year in almost a decade, I didn't find any new Mountain Goat albums to obsess over. This is a combination of having filled out nearly all of his back catalog, and being somewhat let down by his new album this year, All Eternal's Deck. AED had one song that produced one of the aforementioned "songasms," High Hawk Season. Damn These Vampires and Prowl Great Cain are also very strong songs. But, past that, the album just never caught my imagination. I felt like John Darnielle pulled back on this album and didn't do many songs that were really personal or daring. I know it has to be emotionally draining to produce albums like The Sunset Tree or The Coroner's Gambit, but there was something clinical and clean about All Eternal's Deck that robbed it of emotion. But, I'm not losing faith, and await the next album he produces so it can wipe away my rather feeble memories of this one.
This year marked a significant shift in my music listening habits. Save for a few rare instances, I'm buying 100% of my music online now. As a result, I'm spending a lot more time mixing my own playlists, and I buy a lot of single tracks to fill these in. Gone are the days when I'd have to shell out money for a CD to get one good song. So, this means that if I find an album that holds my attention, it's a really good album.
Probably my favorite album discovery was How We Quit the Forest by Rasputina. Rasputina is progressive cello rock with hints of steampunk and goth. Her literary and historical interests are very strong, and half of the pleasure of listening to Rasputina is researching the obscure historical trivia she's referencing, or else having her sing a song about something that you knew about, but had never known was songworthy until now. Alas, Rasputina is so far ranging in her topics and musical approaches, most of her albums are a mess of stuff that doesn't really fit together. She has an annoying fondness for gimicky, jokey songs that really stop being interesting the second time you hear them. But, her instincts also drive her to write songs with haunting lyrics and beautiful melodies, and can produce songs so perfect they give me songasms.
How We Quit the Forest has only a few joke songs (Onward Christian Soldiers, Diamond Mind, and Dwarf Star). And, as her joke songs go, these are pretty good ones. But, she really goes all out on more serious topics, singing about relationships in The Olde Headboard, senility in Rose K, human cruelty in Herb Girls of Birkenau, and standing by a troubled/sick friend in Sign of the Zodiac. And, if there has ever been a better song, wierder, more perfect song about alienation and love than The New Zero, I can't think of it. Seriously, my friend Mike Edmonston told me about this band last spring, and I've been hooked since the first you-tube video I sampled, a cello driven cover of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here.
In contrast to my online discoveries, I happened to run across Radiohead's albums Amnesiac and Kid A while I was in a thrift store. The CDs were only 99 cent, so picking them up wasn't a huge gamble. I've like Radiohead in small doses, but never really fell in love with their albums before. But both Amnesiac and Kid A are works of art that need to be listened to in thier entirity. They are atmospheric, moody, and haunting, with most of the voice work digitally altered until it's nearly impossible to understand. But, rather than being annoying, the warped voices add to the overall emotion of the albums, and seem to be a statement in themselves about how difficult it is to communicate honestly. I don't use drugs, but these albums give me a feeling of altered consciousness, of sinking into a surreal landscape where the familiar becomes unrecognizable.
While I'd been lukewarm to Radiohead, I've loved the Decemberists since I first heard them, and have nearly all their albums. One I didn't have until recently was The Hazards of Love. It's a concept album, where all the songs blend together to tell the story of a shapeshifting son of the forest who seduces a mortal woman. When I heard about it, it was a bit too fairy-tale for my tastes. Also, I had the bad luck of listening to The Rake's Song out of context, and was just put off by it. It's sung by a man who boasts of murdering his three children after his wife dies so he can return to the life of a wanton bachelor. The Decemberists have a flair for dark humor, but, out of context, this song was too dark even for my tastes.
Now, I've heard it in context and, wow, The Hazards of Love is easily the Decemberist's best album. Ironically, it manages to do this without having any of thier best songs. There's nothing from this album I'm going to pull out and put onto my Decemberist playlist. The songs really only make sense in the context of the other songs. The Rake's Song doesn't work unless it's matched by the revenge song that comes near the end of the album where the spirits of the dead children rise from the water to greet thier murderous father. Many of the catchiest songs echo and thread throughout the work, like the refrain of the title, "The Hazards of Love," or the chorus from the song "The Wanting Comes in Waves." Most of the characters in the musical play are matched with musical themes, and the music will shift from theme to theme as the characters interact. I find myself looking forward to driving places that take more than an hour to get to, so I'll have the chance to listen to the whole album at once, which is really the only way to approach this. Otherwise, it would be like trying to watch a movie in three and four minute snippets.
One last note: My year got off to a good start with Jonah Knight released an EP of songs based on my novel Nobody Gets the Girl. While it seems like that should be on my list of favorite albums, I confess that Jonah really knocked the Nobody soundtrack out of my year end thoughts by putting out an even better album, The Age of Steam: Strange Machines. Steampunk is a growing trend in a lot of media, and some artists embrace of it seems more opportunistic than inspired. But, The Age of Steam is a perfect blend of geeky and creepy and just sounds sincere. You can tell Jonah loves the subjects of time machines, airships, haunted guitars and the restless dead. Also, he does a cover of "Bad Moon Rising" that will make you forget the original version, which had a pop, upbeat melody. Jonah's slow, haunting take really highlights the menace woven through the lyrics. This version really makes going out at night when a bad moon is on the rise sound like a very poor choice.
I feel like I need to note an absense on this list: For the first year in almost a decade, I didn't find any new Mountain Goat albums to obsess over. This is a combination of having filled out nearly all of his back catalog, and being somewhat let down by his new album this year, All Eternal's Deck. AED had one song that produced one of the aforementioned "songasms," High Hawk Season. Damn These Vampires and Prowl Great Cain are also very strong songs. But, past that, the album just never caught my imagination. I felt like John Darnielle pulled back on this album and didn't do many songs that were really personal or daring. I know it has to be emotionally draining to produce albums like The Sunset Tree or The Coroner's Gambit, but there was something clinical and clean about All Eternal's Deck that robbed it of emotion. But, I'm not losing faith, and await the next album he produces so it can wipe away my rather feeble memories of this one.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
The War on Christmas
First, as an atheist, I'd like to apologize for the behavior of some of my brethren this season. Specifically, I'm talking about the atheists who flooded the lottery system for a town in California in order to claim 15 of 18 spaces reserved in a public park for a holiday display. Ordinarily, these spaces were used by local churches to stage nativity scenes. This year, however, only three churches could put up displays due to the atheists having snatched up the other spaces. Adding insult to injury, the atheists only put up three rather boring winter solstice displays, then left the remaining dozen spaces empty.
Some people will argue that a public park shouldn't be used for religious displays, period. I find this a little confusing. It seems to me that public parks as shared space should be available for use of all the public, and, last I checked, Christians composed at least some small portion of the population. I would think that as long as the local government is neutral on content, allowing religions other than Christianity to put up displays if they wish, there's no violation of anyone's rights unfolding by letting churches stage their nativity scenes in a park. If you can stage a Shakesperian play in a park, why not the nativity? A nativity scene is just a very boring play. Some teenagers in robes stand around with sheep and a donkey, staring adoringly at a baby doll in a straw-filled wooden box for hours on end. The highlight of the evening is if the donkey poops. How does this harm anyone?
I firmly support the right for atheist groups to put up a display promoting their point of view. But to leave the majority of spaces empty just shows they weren't interested in spreading a message, they were interested in silencing Christians. I can think of no motivation beyond spite.
It is, bluntly, the work of jerks. The fact that these jerks happen to be atheists embarrasses me. No one should gain pleasure by stopping their fellow man from partaking in an activity that he enjoys if no one is harmed. It's just petty.
That said, I find it tiresome that some right wing commentators use this time of year to trot out the predictable phrase, the War on Christmas.
If Christmas is in any existential danger, it's not from atheists. Instead, it's in danger from the corporate Christmas machine. Christmas has become a brand, a rather naked excuse to drive American's into a shopping frenzy that results in shoppers breaking down mall doors, pepper spraying fellow shoppers, and brawling over sneakers. I know that there's a reporting bias here; no one is going to report a story of shoppers entering a Walmart, quietly finding the items they want, then checking out with a polite cashier. It's only the extremes of naughty that make the Drudge Report.
Still, I can't help but feel that Christmas has been warped by our collective affluence. I find an analogy with our obesity epidemic. American's used to do a lot of manual labor and eat less processed foods, and were, on the whole, much thinner. But, we got smart, started working desk jobs and making more money, and began eating out all the time. We ballooned up. Christmas faced a similar problem. There was a time when gift giving meant more, because people didn't have as much free money as they do today. (Arguably, the free money is actually cheap credit, but that's another column.) A girl who got a doll on Christmas morning was thrilled, because she didn't have that many toys. Today, kids have more toys than they can ever play with. I've watched kids opening gifts and been struck at just how jaded and ungrateful they seem now. It doesn't get much better with adults. Because we're affluent relative to the Victorian era where many of our traditions began, most of us already have all the stuff we need to live a comfortable life. So, Christmas gifts almost by definition are becoming stuff that we don't need. I was struck by a gift center in a department store the other week, where the items being sold were obvious intended for no other purpose than giving away, since they were in decorative holiday boxes already. The gifts were little doo-dads and trinkets. A hammer with a flashlight in the handle. Binoculars with a compass built in. Clock radios for showers. Golf balls with little christmas trees on them. Bars of soap shaped like snowflakes.
No one would ever buy these items for themselves. But, because we absolutely must give gifts, these useless, pointless items are purchased, given, then promptly go into drawers, or storage buildings, or landfills.
Just as our affluence has led us to devour too many empty calories, we now clog the arteries of our holiday traditions with valueless gifts. And, just as our wastelines have expanded beyond the bounds of health and attractiveness, Christmas has expanded, swelling across the calendar to all but swallow Thanksgiving and Halloween, which are now events concurrent with the Christmas season, rather than events that preceed it.
I admit, I'm saying this as an outsider who walked away from Christmas many years ago. It may be that those of you who still celebrate the holiday like walking into malls at Labor Day and looking at the Christmas displays going up. But, I still can't help but think that, if Christmas doesn't mean as much as it used to, it's not the fault of atheists.
Some people will argue that a public park shouldn't be used for religious displays, period. I find this a little confusing. It seems to me that public parks as shared space should be available for use of all the public, and, last I checked, Christians composed at least some small portion of the population. I would think that as long as the local government is neutral on content, allowing religions other than Christianity to put up displays if they wish, there's no violation of anyone's rights unfolding by letting churches stage their nativity scenes in a park. If you can stage a Shakesperian play in a park, why not the nativity? A nativity scene is just a very boring play. Some teenagers in robes stand around with sheep and a donkey, staring adoringly at a baby doll in a straw-filled wooden box for hours on end. The highlight of the evening is if the donkey poops. How does this harm anyone?
I firmly support the right for atheist groups to put up a display promoting their point of view. But to leave the majority of spaces empty just shows they weren't interested in spreading a message, they were interested in silencing Christians. I can think of no motivation beyond spite.
It is, bluntly, the work of jerks. The fact that these jerks happen to be atheists embarrasses me. No one should gain pleasure by stopping their fellow man from partaking in an activity that he enjoys if no one is harmed. It's just petty.
That said, I find it tiresome that some right wing commentators use this time of year to trot out the predictable phrase, the War on Christmas.
If Christmas is in any existential danger, it's not from atheists. Instead, it's in danger from the corporate Christmas machine. Christmas has become a brand, a rather naked excuse to drive American's into a shopping frenzy that results in shoppers breaking down mall doors, pepper spraying fellow shoppers, and brawling over sneakers. I know that there's a reporting bias here; no one is going to report a story of shoppers entering a Walmart, quietly finding the items they want, then checking out with a polite cashier. It's only the extremes of naughty that make the Drudge Report.
Still, I can't help but feel that Christmas has been warped by our collective affluence. I find an analogy with our obesity epidemic. American's used to do a lot of manual labor and eat less processed foods, and were, on the whole, much thinner. But, we got smart, started working desk jobs and making more money, and began eating out all the time. We ballooned up. Christmas faced a similar problem. There was a time when gift giving meant more, because people didn't have as much free money as they do today. (Arguably, the free money is actually cheap credit, but that's another column.) A girl who got a doll on Christmas morning was thrilled, because she didn't have that many toys. Today, kids have more toys than they can ever play with. I've watched kids opening gifts and been struck at just how jaded and ungrateful they seem now. It doesn't get much better with adults. Because we're affluent relative to the Victorian era where many of our traditions began, most of us already have all the stuff we need to live a comfortable life. So, Christmas gifts almost by definition are becoming stuff that we don't need. I was struck by a gift center in a department store the other week, where the items being sold were obvious intended for no other purpose than giving away, since they were in decorative holiday boxes already. The gifts were little doo-dads and trinkets. A hammer with a flashlight in the handle. Binoculars with a compass built in. Clock radios for showers. Golf balls with little christmas trees on them. Bars of soap shaped like snowflakes.
No one would ever buy these items for themselves. But, because we absolutely must give gifts, these useless, pointless items are purchased, given, then promptly go into drawers, or storage buildings, or landfills.
Just as our affluence has led us to devour too many empty calories, we now clog the arteries of our holiday traditions with valueless gifts. And, just as our wastelines have expanded beyond the bounds of health and attractiveness, Christmas has expanded, swelling across the calendar to all but swallow Thanksgiving and Halloween, which are now events concurrent with the Christmas season, rather than events that preceed it.
I admit, I'm saying this as an outsider who walked away from Christmas many years ago. It may be that those of you who still celebrate the holiday like walking into malls at Labor Day and looking at the Christmas displays going up. But, I still can't help but think that, if Christmas doesn't mean as much as it used to, it's not the fault of atheists.
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Through the Looking Glass
This week produced one of those moments in politics where I felt, once more, that I lived in a Looking Glass universe. The heart of the weirdness started when Newt Gingrich said something right on the borderline of common sense, always a dangerous place for any politician to wander. Gingrich said, if I may paraphrase, that our child labor laws hurt poor children who would enjoy long term benefits in life if they were allowed to work at an earlier age. He went on to say that the poorest of poor children grow up in households and neighborhoods where no adult works, so they never witness good work habits. Finally, his proposed remedy was to hire the children as janitors in their public schools.
There are three basic arguments here. First, poor children would benefit if child labor laws were changed. My libertarian sensibilities lead me to believe this statement is true for all children, not just poor ones. I'm not saying children should be put to work in sweat shops, nor that they should be allowed to work schedules that would take away time from their education. But, in my personal experience, people who started working early in life (often outside the legal employment grid, working as baby sitters and mowing lawns) tend to be more mature by the time they reach college age than the kids who've managed to avoid any real labor. Of course, the real issue today may be, if we did remove the working age barrier, and let individuals employ whoever they wished no matter what their age, would there be any jobs available for young workers? Still, on this point, I think Gingrich was taking a common sense position, but many commentators acted as if he was advocating child abuse. The Nation ran an article titled "The Nastiness of Newt Gingrich" and the New York Times had an editorial titled "Newt Gingrich's War on Poor Children."
The latter essay, by Charles Blow, directly attacked the second premise of Gingrich's argument, that poor children don't see adults working. I'll concede that Gingrich didn't throw out any percentages, so his claim is a bit overly broad. By the census statistics Charles Blow sites, fifty percent of all households in poverty have at least one parent working full time, and another twenty-five percent have a parent working part time. That still leaves one in four children fitting Gingrich's assertion. But, Charles Blow goes on to look at the "poorest of the poor," since that is who Gingrich singled out, and seems to feel like he's delivering a devestating rebuttal when he declares that 1/3 of these households have at least one working parent. Meaning two out of three of these households don't have an employed adult providing a role model for their kids. Either Charles Blow is really bad at math, or he thinks his readers are, to trot out a statistic supporting Gingrich's argument and wave it around as evidence that Gingrich is wrong.
But it wasn't this editorial that most pushed me into Looking Glass land. It's was Gingrich's solution to the problem of childhood unemployment. By arguing that they should work at their schools, Gingrich is suggesting that the government hire them. Isn't this... I dunno... a stimulus plan? Instead of removing barriers to kids finding work in the private sector (for instance, by having a lower minimum wage for teenagers), he's proposing that government do the hiring directly. Isn't this something that, if President Obama proposed it, Newt Gingrich would denounce as socialist manipulation of the free market?
For all the Tea Party types who are starting to support Gingrich (who is, I admit, a towering intellectual genius when placed against Perry, Bachmann, and Cain, and a portrait of political courage when stood up next to spineless Romney), pay close attention to what Gingrich is revealing about his political instincts in this off the cuff remark. He may talk up small goverment and free enterprise, but Gingrich is a political creature to his deepest core. He's a font of ideas, but many of these ideas are about how government can improve people's lives. If he winds up as president, there is no way he'll govern as a hand's off, libertarian type. The problems of the world are nails sticking up that he doesn't want people to trip on, and government is his hammer. That people who claim to want small government can choose a man like him over someone like Ron Paul is mystifying to me. At least, it's mystifying until I remember, oh, right, I'm through the Looking Glass.
There are three basic arguments here. First, poor children would benefit if child labor laws were changed. My libertarian sensibilities lead me to believe this statement is true for all children, not just poor ones. I'm not saying children should be put to work in sweat shops, nor that they should be allowed to work schedules that would take away time from their education. But, in my personal experience, people who started working early in life (often outside the legal employment grid, working as baby sitters and mowing lawns) tend to be more mature by the time they reach college age than the kids who've managed to avoid any real labor. Of course, the real issue today may be, if we did remove the working age barrier, and let individuals employ whoever they wished no matter what their age, would there be any jobs available for young workers? Still, on this point, I think Gingrich was taking a common sense position, but many commentators acted as if he was advocating child abuse. The Nation ran an article titled "The Nastiness of Newt Gingrich" and the New York Times had an editorial titled "Newt Gingrich's War on Poor Children."
The latter essay, by Charles Blow, directly attacked the second premise of Gingrich's argument, that poor children don't see adults working. I'll concede that Gingrich didn't throw out any percentages, so his claim is a bit overly broad. By the census statistics Charles Blow sites, fifty percent of all households in poverty have at least one parent working full time, and another twenty-five percent have a parent working part time. That still leaves one in four children fitting Gingrich's assertion. But, Charles Blow goes on to look at the "poorest of the poor," since that is who Gingrich singled out, and seems to feel like he's delivering a devestating rebuttal when he declares that 1/3 of these households have at least one working parent. Meaning two out of three of these households don't have an employed adult providing a role model for their kids. Either Charles Blow is really bad at math, or he thinks his readers are, to trot out a statistic supporting Gingrich's argument and wave it around as evidence that Gingrich is wrong.
But it wasn't this editorial that most pushed me into Looking Glass land. It's was Gingrich's solution to the problem of childhood unemployment. By arguing that they should work at their schools, Gingrich is suggesting that the government hire them. Isn't this... I dunno... a stimulus plan? Instead of removing barriers to kids finding work in the private sector (for instance, by having a lower minimum wage for teenagers), he's proposing that government do the hiring directly. Isn't this something that, if President Obama proposed it, Newt Gingrich would denounce as socialist manipulation of the free market?
For all the Tea Party types who are starting to support Gingrich (who is, I admit, a towering intellectual genius when placed against Perry, Bachmann, and Cain, and a portrait of political courage when stood up next to spineless Romney), pay close attention to what Gingrich is revealing about his political instincts in this off the cuff remark. He may talk up small goverment and free enterprise, but Gingrich is a political creature to his deepest core. He's a font of ideas, but many of these ideas are about how government can improve people's lives. If he winds up as president, there is no way he'll govern as a hand's off, libertarian type. The problems of the world are nails sticking up that he doesn't want people to trip on, and government is his hammer. That people who claim to want small government can choose a man like him over someone like Ron Paul is mystifying to me. At least, it's mystifying until I remember, oh, right, I'm through the Looking Glass.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Harvest Marriage
Harvest MarriageLights danced below as the Ferris wheel
lifted us above the county fair
toward a crescent October moon.
In the calm above the crowds we kissed
and said for the first time, “I love you.”
Ours was to be a harvest marriage
growing from seeds planted long ago.
Our love didn’t burst up and blossom
following the first raindrops of spring
like some eager radish full of heat
that wilts only days after it’s picked.
The seedling we planted took its time
weathering out the ticking seasons.
The tree of us has grown strong enough
to stand against this life’s hurricanes
with branches green and thick and sturdy
to support the heaviest of fruit
which we pluck and take into our teeth
when the ripe bite is at its sweetest.
_____
Poem to commemorate the wedding of James Maxey and Cheryl Morgan
11-11-11
____
Poem is copyright James Maxey 2011
May be used freely for non-commercial purposes
as long as authorship is attributed to James Maxey.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Doing our best to stimulate the economy
So, anyway, I'm getting married this Friday. 11-11-11.
If the economic picture of the US has improved recently, I suspect economists will be able to trace it to the number of wedding gifts that have been shipped to Cheryl and me these last couple of weeks. Today when I got home from work there was a large box from Khol's sitting on the deck. I went inside and forgot about it. Cheryl came home, passed by the box, and only an hour later did we think, oh, right, there's a present sitting outside. I had no idea it was possible to reach a state of gift numbness, but we might be getting there. It's been like Christmas every day for a month. If stock in Bed, Bath, and Beyond is going up, our gift registry is the cause.
Not that we haven't been shelling out money of our own. Weddings these days have lots of little expenses that never entered my mind when I proposed marriage. I mean, I knew we'd be spending money on a cake, some fancy clothes, flowers, etc., but I hadn't anticipated that we would require personalized M&M brand candies with our faces printed on them, or 200 tiny plastic bags to sort them into, or the mile and a half of ribbon needed to tie up all the bags. We've also got a LOT of wine stockpiled. Cases of wine every where you look, including at the foot of our bed. Since we're trying to sell our house, I can only imagine that anyone who has looked at the property must have gazed into our bedroom and assumed we were alcoholics.
None of this is a complaint, by the way. I'm happy to report that we're not going into debt for this wedding. We've done things responsibly, and Cheryl has been a Jedi master of bargain shopping. In the end, it's going to be one heck of a celebration, for an event worthy of such celebration. I've been smiling all year when I think about it. See how happy we look on the candy?
Friday, October 28, 2011
1% is amazing if you stop to think about it
I saw a magazine cover reporting on the Occupy Wall Street protests with the words, "We are the 99%." These words have been kicking around in my head for a few days, but probably not for the reason the protesters would like.
Is it really possible that 1% of Americans are wealthy? According to census data, the top 1% of earners make more than $390,000 a year. I would certainly consider that wealthy. I've also done a little googling and found a statistic that's likely out of date that says that 4% of all US households have assets greater that $1,000,000. This could be properties, businesses, etc. For instance, a farmer with a lot of land could easily have $1,000,000 in property, but be nowhere near that in annual income. Still, it ain't chump change.
If you stop and think about it, these numbers are pretty amazing. Has there ever been a society in human history were 1 person out of every 100 was wealthy? 100 people isn't a very large crowd. Can wealth really be that widespread?
If we do have a system that can allow 1 person in 100 to attain this level of wealth, I would argue that we should be very careful about messing it up. 1 in 100 are really pretty swell odds. A hell of a lot better than a lottery ticket.
What a great country!
Is it really possible that 1% of Americans are wealthy? According to census data, the top 1% of earners make more than $390,000 a year. I would certainly consider that wealthy. I've also done a little googling and found a statistic that's likely out of date that says that 4% of all US households have assets greater that $1,000,000. This could be properties, businesses, etc. For instance, a farmer with a lot of land could easily have $1,000,000 in property, but be nowhere near that in annual income. Still, it ain't chump change.
If you stop and think about it, these numbers are pretty amazing. Has there ever been a society in human history were 1 person out of every 100 was wealthy? 100 people isn't a very large crowd. Can wealth really be that widespread?
If we do have a system that can allow 1 person in 100 to attain this level of wealth, I would argue that we should be very careful about messing it up. 1 in 100 are really pretty swell odds. A hell of a lot better than a lottery ticket.
What a great country!
Monday, October 24, 2011
A Dream of Greg
Last night I had a dream that felt like it unfolded over hours. I was supposed to meet my best friend Greg for lunch at some hamburger place downtown. Greg passed away about two years ago, but I remember I was looking forward to talking to him about current political news. I think he would be particularly energized right now by the Republican candidates. Greg was always more animated by the things he was against than the things he was for. He could waver in affection for Democrats, but unfailingly could be counted on to hate Republicans, and the current slate of second-string wannabes would be a lame antelope to the sights of the leonine political carnivore that dwelled within him.
Back to the dream: I got to one restaurant, but realized there was another one with a similar name on the next block. When he didn't show up, I tried calling him, but all I got was his voice mail. I finally decided he must be at the other restaurant. But on my way there, I saw my cat Sarah, normally an indoor cat, strolling leisurely along the sidewalk of the busy downtown. I ran to scoop her up, but now had the problem that I couldn't go into a restaurant carrying a cat. Worse, I was more confused than ever which restaurant I was supposed to be at. I was looking at Urban Spoon on my phone, and there were, like, nine hamburger restaurants spread out over downtown.
I got so desperate I tried texting Greg. I never text. But when I put down Sarah to use both hands, she ran under a parked car. To my horror, she was laying in front of the back wheel when the driver got in the car and pulled away. Fortunately, she jumped out at the last second.
I retrieved her, but now I was extra stuck, unable to use my phone since I was carrying my cat. Suddenly Cheryl (my fiance) shows up! She says she eats lunch at this restaurant all the time. We decide to go to the dollar tree to buy a cat carrier to hold Sarah. On our way there, I call Greg again, and his daughter Flora answers, and tells me Greg thought we were meeting for dinner on Thursday.
I don't talk about dreams often. To be honest, I rarely remember them, and those I do remember are too random and banal to be worth recounting. This one probably is as well. I think I remember it because when I woke up this morning, Sarah was staring into my face, and I thought, "Well, at least you made it home okay." It felt very real that I'd had to rescue her. It took a little while for me to realize that it hadn't actually happened.
And, of course, I've spent all day thinking of Greg, wishing we were having dinner Thursday, wanting to hear him rant about Herman Cain and Rick Perry.
Back to the dream: I got to one restaurant, but realized there was another one with a similar name on the next block. When he didn't show up, I tried calling him, but all I got was his voice mail. I finally decided he must be at the other restaurant. But on my way there, I saw my cat Sarah, normally an indoor cat, strolling leisurely along the sidewalk of the busy downtown. I ran to scoop her up, but now had the problem that I couldn't go into a restaurant carrying a cat. Worse, I was more confused than ever which restaurant I was supposed to be at. I was looking at Urban Spoon on my phone, and there were, like, nine hamburger restaurants spread out over downtown.
I got so desperate I tried texting Greg. I never text. But when I put down Sarah to use both hands, she ran under a parked car. To my horror, she was laying in front of the back wheel when the driver got in the car and pulled away. Fortunately, she jumped out at the last second.
I retrieved her, but now I was extra stuck, unable to use my phone since I was carrying my cat. Suddenly Cheryl (my fiance) shows up! She says she eats lunch at this restaurant all the time. We decide to go to the dollar tree to buy a cat carrier to hold Sarah. On our way there, I call Greg again, and his daughter Flora answers, and tells me Greg thought we were meeting for dinner on Thursday.
I don't talk about dreams often. To be honest, I rarely remember them, and those I do remember are too random and banal to be worth recounting. This one probably is as well. I think I remember it because when I woke up this morning, Sarah was staring into my face, and I thought, "Well, at least you made it home okay." It felt very real that I'd had to rescue her. It took a little while for me to realize that it hadn't actually happened.
And, of course, I've spent all day thinking of Greg, wishing we were having dinner Thursday, wanting to hear him rant about Herman Cain and Rick Perry.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Are things getting better, or worse? 2011 edition
I feel like I'm having a hard time thinking about the news of late. I consider myself a informed member of society, who cares about responsible government, the environment, the economy, the whole shebang. For a long time, I've been content to throw my support to libertarians, whose philosophy matches my own for the most part. But, in this upcoming election, I'm starting to worry about the charge that I'm throwing my vote away by supporting candidates that can't win.
Anyone paying attention has to see that the United States is in an especially perilous situation at the moment. We suffer from a self-inflicted debt crisis, we suffer from hidden inflation caused by intentional manipulation of the value of a dollar, we have a housing crisis, an employment crisis, an education crisis, an imigration crisis, etc.
For a while the world seemed safer following the end of the cold war, anyone paying attention to events overseas has to be a little nervous. We live in a world of aging dictators. Nations throughout the middle east are fraying, but this is going to be small change when Pakistan finally falls apart. China's unrepresentative form of government is almost certainly doomed. In Russia, Putin has held onto power (even if he's officially been retired) for decades. What flows into the vacuum when he dies? When Somalia fell apart and couldn't put itself back together again, unless you lived in Somolia, it probably didn't affect you. But what if Mexico gets torn apart by its ongoing drug wars? What if there's another Tianamen Square incident in China, only this time everyone in China knows about it because of the internet? What if the Saudi king dies next week? (His prince just died today.)
All before me, I see bad choice after bad choice. I can support Obama, who apparently has adopted the unique constitutional view that it's legal for him to execute US citizens abroad, or I can support whatever deranged kook the Republicans regurgitate out of the digetive tract of their primaries.
The fear is strong.
And yet.
And yet!
My own life is actually pretty FANTASTIC! As the world falls apart, my life just keeps getting better.
1. I'm getting married! 11-11-11! And, I know that there have been other marriages in the world before, but this one is really going to be the best marriage ever. Seriously, Cheryl and I may be coming to this wedding game late in life (we're both in our forties), but I look back and wonder how the young ever manage to pull it off. I've never felt so optimistic about any choice I've made in life.
2. I'm a writer! I mean, I've been a writer for a long time, but suddenly, I'm a writer with books in print. I started writing when I was 25. It took me twenty years to get four novels in print. Now, in the next twenty months, I'll have at least four more in print, and maybe five or six depending on my stamina and the eagerness of my publishers. I was working on Hush earlier today and thinking, "Wow. I'm in the zone!" Is there anything more satisfying for the human soul than making art and having it find an audience?
3. I'm not broke! Maybe the rest of the world is heading for the poor house, but I'm doing pretty well these days. I'm not even close to wealthy, but my long struggle to pay of my debts has been successful, and these days the money that used to go to credit card companies is mostly winding up in savings. It's nice to feel like I've got forward momentum after two decades of either treading water or slipping backwards.
Which makes me wonder about all the doom and gloom at the beginning of this essay. You know, life has it's ups and downs. Ten years ago, a fair minded observer of my life might have concluded that I was heading for a train wreck. I wasn't selling books, my other day job was in turmoil, I was getting divorced, and I was piling on debt. Even I had my doubts going into the last decade that I'd make it out without being bankrupt and broken down. But, I kept on plodding. I set goals. I failed to meet them. I set new goals. I met some, failed others. I set more goals! And, little by little, things got better.
Perhaps that's happening on a grander scale. I've read that personal debt levels are falling and savings rates are rising. I've also seen stats that divorce rates are falling. Maybe we need rough times to make us push a little harder. If so, maybe all the doom and gloom of today's larger world is just a precursor to a future that might damn well be near Utopian.
Anyone paying attention has to see that the United States is in an especially perilous situation at the moment. We suffer from a self-inflicted debt crisis, we suffer from hidden inflation caused by intentional manipulation of the value of a dollar, we have a housing crisis, an employment crisis, an education crisis, an imigration crisis, etc.
For a while the world seemed safer following the end of the cold war, anyone paying attention to events overseas has to be a little nervous. We live in a world of aging dictators. Nations throughout the middle east are fraying, but this is going to be small change when Pakistan finally falls apart. China's unrepresentative form of government is almost certainly doomed. In Russia, Putin has held onto power (even if he's officially been retired) for decades. What flows into the vacuum when he dies? When Somalia fell apart and couldn't put itself back together again, unless you lived in Somolia, it probably didn't affect you. But what if Mexico gets torn apart by its ongoing drug wars? What if there's another Tianamen Square incident in China, only this time everyone in China knows about it because of the internet? What if the Saudi king dies next week? (His prince just died today.)
All before me, I see bad choice after bad choice. I can support Obama, who apparently has adopted the unique constitutional view that it's legal for him to execute US citizens abroad, or I can support whatever deranged kook the Republicans regurgitate out of the digetive tract of their primaries.
The fear is strong.
And yet.
And yet!
My own life is actually pretty FANTASTIC! As the world falls apart, my life just keeps getting better.
1. I'm getting married! 11-11-11! And, I know that there have been other marriages in the world before, but this one is really going to be the best marriage ever. Seriously, Cheryl and I may be coming to this wedding game late in life (we're both in our forties), but I look back and wonder how the young ever manage to pull it off. I've never felt so optimistic about any choice I've made in life.
2. I'm a writer! I mean, I've been a writer for a long time, but suddenly, I'm a writer with books in print. I started writing when I was 25. It took me twenty years to get four novels in print. Now, in the next twenty months, I'll have at least four more in print, and maybe five or six depending on my stamina and the eagerness of my publishers. I was working on Hush earlier today and thinking, "Wow. I'm in the zone!" Is there anything more satisfying for the human soul than making art and having it find an audience?
3. I'm not broke! Maybe the rest of the world is heading for the poor house, but I'm doing pretty well these days. I'm not even close to wealthy, but my long struggle to pay of my debts has been successful, and these days the money that used to go to credit card companies is mostly winding up in savings. It's nice to feel like I've got forward momentum after two decades of either treading water or slipping backwards.
Which makes me wonder about all the doom and gloom at the beginning of this essay. You know, life has it's ups and downs. Ten years ago, a fair minded observer of my life might have concluded that I was heading for a train wreck. I wasn't selling books, my other day job was in turmoil, I was getting divorced, and I was piling on debt. Even I had my doubts going into the last decade that I'd make it out without being bankrupt and broken down. But, I kept on plodding. I set goals. I failed to meet them. I set new goals. I met some, failed others. I set more goals! And, little by little, things got better.
Perhaps that's happening on a grander scale. I've read that personal debt levels are falling and savings rates are rising. I've also seen stats that divorce rates are falling. Maybe we need rough times to make us push a little harder. If so, maybe all the doom and gloom of today's larger world is just a precursor to a future that might damn well be near Utopian.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
A few questions about living longer
I watched a show on Discovery the other night about prolonging human life. The show laid out a semi-plausible scenario by which a middle aged person today might possibly survive for the next thousand years. Some of the technology is almost certainly heading our way in the next few decades, such as growing new organs from stem cells. Other bits, such as being able to move a human personality from cloned body to cloned body, are most likely pure fantasy.
Watching the show, I had two questions:
1. Who's paying for all this? Let's suppose that we can grow new hearts, lungs, and livers that are genetically perfect matches that have no risk of rejection. This certainly can't come cheap. Today, the technical difficulties of organ transplants presents a serious obstacle to them being more widespread. The difficulty of finding a suitable donor, plus the dangers of rejection, make organ transplants a tough call even if you're wealthy. Due to the risks, the people who need them most probably wait until they are too sick for the transplant to really help them. But, if people in their forties and fifties, in relatively good health save for early heart disease, can have a new heart grown for them that will genetically be part of thier body, I imagine the demand would jump tremendously.
Some costs would probably fall. You wouldn't need extensive follow up treatment with anti-rejection drugs, for instance. But, other costs would almost definitely rise. Until they build a robot capable of the job, the number of surgeons capable of performing a heart transplant is probably going to be fairly small. The way to attract more surgeons into the field would be to increase salaries. Increasing salaries means increasing costs.
Insurance companies will almost certainly be mandated by law to cover these expenses, which means that the cost is going to get passed on to everyone. Is there a point where the cost of paying for all potential life saving treatments begins to hurt everyone's standard of living? If my current insurance costs tripled, could I still afford a mortgage?
2. Let's magically wave our hands and say that everything will be paid for without pain. Advances in robotics and computing are rapid enough that human surgeons become a thing of the past and we now have armies of robo-surgeons operating 24/7, paying for themselves after a hundred surguries, and driving the cost of open heart surgury down to about what it costs to have a tooth filled. It's not impossible--look at the cost curve for laser eye surgury, once several thousand dollars an eye, now a few hundred.
Now, people can keep swapping out thier major organs, and life expectancy sky-rockets. People start living healthy lives to 110, 120, 130. Are people going to still expect to retire at 65? Are we going to raise the retirement age to 100? How many careers can support someone for 75 years or more? You might think you're sitting pretty as a heart surgeon, then, boom, along comes a robot that does your job better. Maybe you work for a major coporation like Wachovia. Your jobs safe until... what's that? Wachovia was sold to Wells Fargo? Never mind.
If I keep writing, will novels I'm writing then be better, or is there a point where any artist would be doomed to become a parody of himself? Would it be routine for people to start new careers at fifty, sixty, or eighty? What's the job market going to look like when eighty year olds are suddenly as hungry for entry level positions at twenty year olds?
I don't want to be overly negative. Obviously, there are huge upsides to living longer. On a personal level, I'd love to be able to spend the extra decades in good health with my loved ones. On a social level, maybe politicians who are fifty, sixty, and seventy years old might think about the consequences of thier policies fifty years from now if they thought they'd actually be around to experience the effects.
It could happen. You never know.
Watching the show, I had two questions:
1. Who's paying for all this? Let's suppose that we can grow new hearts, lungs, and livers that are genetically perfect matches that have no risk of rejection. This certainly can't come cheap. Today, the technical difficulties of organ transplants presents a serious obstacle to them being more widespread. The difficulty of finding a suitable donor, plus the dangers of rejection, make organ transplants a tough call even if you're wealthy. Due to the risks, the people who need them most probably wait until they are too sick for the transplant to really help them. But, if people in their forties and fifties, in relatively good health save for early heart disease, can have a new heart grown for them that will genetically be part of thier body, I imagine the demand would jump tremendously.
Some costs would probably fall. You wouldn't need extensive follow up treatment with anti-rejection drugs, for instance. But, other costs would almost definitely rise. Until they build a robot capable of the job, the number of surgeons capable of performing a heart transplant is probably going to be fairly small. The way to attract more surgeons into the field would be to increase salaries. Increasing salaries means increasing costs.
Insurance companies will almost certainly be mandated by law to cover these expenses, which means that the cost is going to get passed on to everyone. Is there a point where the cost of paying for all potential life saving treatments begins to hurt everyone's standard of living? If my current insurance costs tripled, could I still afford a mortgage?
2. Let's magically wave our hands and say that everything will be paid for without pain. Advances in robotics and computing are rapid enough that human surgeons become a thing of the past and we now have armies of robo-surgeons operating 24/7, paying for themselves after a hundred surguries, and driving the cost of open heart surgury down to about what it costs to have a tooth filled. It's not impossible--look at the cost curve for laser eye surgury, once several thousand dollars an eye, now a few hundred.
Now, people can keep swapping out thier major organs, and life expectancy sky-rockets. People start living healthy lives to 110, 120, 130. Are people going to still expect to retire at 65? Are we going to raise the retirement age to 100? How many careers can support someone for 75 years or more? You might think you're sitting pretty as a heart surgeon, then, boom, along comes a robot that does your job better. Maybe you work for a major coporation like Wachovia. Your jobs safe until... what's that? Wachovia was sold to Wells Fargo? Never mind.
If I keep writing, will novels I'm writing then be better, or is there a point where any artist would be doomed to become a parody of himself? Would it be routine for people to start new careers at fifty, sixty, or eighty? What's the job market going to look like when eighty year olds are suddenly as hungry for entry level positions at twenty year olds?
I don't want to be overly negative. Obviously, there are huge upsides to living longer. On a personal level, I'd love to be able to spend the extra decades in good health with my loved ones. On a social level, maybe politicians who are fifty, sixty, and seventy years old might think about the consequences of thier policies fifty years from now if they thought they'd actually be around to experience the effects.
It could happen. You never know.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Further musings on the economy
I've been thinking further about my concerns that 401ks may be having the perverse effect of ruining people's savings by creating bubbles in the stock market. The governmnet has designed a system where people blindly pump money into stocks and bonds week after week, whether the markets are rising, falling, or spinning in circles. I keep reading that, long term, the stock market will continue to grow. But, what if we are being encouraged to place our money in something that doesn't inherently possess the value of the dollars flowing into it?
One could argue that this was exactly what happened with the housing market. Government policy was designed to promote the altruistic goal of helping people buy houses. This was done partly through the tax code, partly through regulation, and partly through Fannie Mae purchasing loans of questionable value. The feeling was that homeownership is always a good thing, both for the individual and the community. But, the noble goal led to the creation of a bubble as people bought houses that they couldn't have afforded if the government policies hadn't been in place. This artificially boosted prices across the board, led to massive overproduction of houses, and created a collapse that has unfolded for the last five years and may take another decade to work out.
I also have to wonder if there isn't a bubble in higher education. Again, altruistic government policy has been to give everyone possible access to college through assistance with loans, grants, etc. The result has been a lot more people going to college, but it's come with the price tag of college costs rising much faster than inflation. And, while having a college degree is still preferable to not having one, it seems like a four year degree doesn't produce that much of an economic boost any more. Government policy has increased the supply of people with degrees, but the demand hasn't kept pace. In conditions like this, you would expect wages to fall... which, in fact, seems to be what's happening in the real world, though there are certainly so many complicating factors it's tough to pin the blame just on this.
Government policy also steered US farm policy to produce a lot of corn. So much corn that we had to find other uses for it than just eating it off the cob or baking cornmeal, so we used it to replace sugar in our beverages. Now, government policy is encouraging us to burn corn for fuel, and the prices of foods that have corn in them are rising.
It's thoughts like these that push me most strongly toward the libertarian camp. We need to scrap every federal legal code that encourages production or consumption of anything and find out what an actual free market looks like. It can't possibly be worse than what we have now.
One could argue that this was exactly what happened with the housing market. Government policy was designed to promote the altruistic goal of helping people buy houses. This was done partly through the tax code, partly through regulation, and partly through Fannie Mae purchasing loans of questionable value. The feeling was that homeownership is always a good thing, both for the individual and the community. But, the noble goal led to the creation of a bubble as people bought houses that they couldn't have afforded if the government policies hadn't been in place. This artificially boosted prices across the board, led to massive overproduction of houses, and created a collapse that has unfolded for the last five years and may take another decade to work out.
I also have to wonder if there isn't a bubble in higher education. Again, altruistic government policy has been to give everyone possible access to college through assistance with loans, grants, etc. The result has been a lot more people going to college, but it's come with the price tag of college costs rising much faster than inflation. And, while having a college degree is still preferable to not having one, it seems like a four year degree doesn't produce that much of an economic boost any more. Government policy has increased the supply of people with degrees, but the demand hasn't kept pace. In conditions like this, you would expect wages to fall... which, in fact, seems to be what's happening in the real world, though there are certainly so many complicating factors it's tough to pin the blame just on this.
Government policy also steered US farm policy to produce a lot of corn. So much corn that we had to find other uses for it than just eating it off the cob or baking cornmeal, so we used it to replace sugar in our beverages. Now, government policy is encouraging us to burn corn for fuel, and the prices of foods that have corn in them are rising.
It's thoughts like these that push me most strongly toward the libertarian camp. We need to scrap every federal legal code that encourages production or consumption of anything and find out what an actual free market looks like. It can't possibly be worse than what we have now.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Are 401ks dangerous?
For years, I've been a cheerleader for 401ks where I work. I personally have helped at least a dozen people get set up over the years. To me, it seems like a no-brainer. Our company matches the first 5% of your pay that you contribute. If an employer wants to boost my pay by 5%, it seems a little rude to say no. And, for that first 5% that I contribute, I instantly double my money. That's a pretty swell rate of return.
Due to Rick Perry calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, I've seen a lot of proposals lately to allow workers to contribute part of their social security taxes to a 401k like savings plan that they would own. Again, this strikes me as a common sense idea. The problem with Social Security is that the government really has no mechanism for actually saving the money. By law, they use the money to buy US Savings bonds. That money instantly goes into the federal budget and gets spent. The bonds are paid back from future tax revenue. It works as long as more and more workers pay into the system to support an ever growing number of retirees. Alas, there are demographic bubbles that will soon produce a system where the number of retirees grows much faster than the number of workers.
But, is the government administered saving plan any better? Is my company's 401k? The problem that I see is that, prior to the creation of the 401k, people investing in the stock market were mainly investing thier own money. They were buying stocks because they thought the price was attractive, and they were careful because they alone carried the risk.
But, with 401ks, every week millions of people turn their money over to financial institutions who buy stocks for them. They can't simply sit on the money until a good deal comes along. Week after week, they must go out and purchase stocks. And, if they pick wrong, perhaps they get a smaller bonus, but they don't actually lose their own money.
Can our present financial woes be at least partially traced to the fact that so many of us are subscribing to a mostly blind investment? Are those enough smart enough to plan for our own retirement through these plans unwittingly helping to create market bubbles that will eventually destroy any value we've accumulated?
And if so, what can we possibly do to fix this?
Due to Rick Perry calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, I've seen a lot of proposals lately to allow workers to contribute part of their social security taxes to a 401k like savings plan that they would own. Again, this strikes me as a common sense idea. The problem with Social Security is that the government really has no mechanism for actually saving the money. By law, they use the money to buy US Savings bonds. That money instantly goes into the federal budget and gets spent. The bonds are paid back from future tax revenue. It works as long as more and more workers pay into the system to support an ever growing number of retirees. Alas, there are demographic bubbles that will soon produce a system where the number of retirees grows much faster than the number of workers.
But, is the government administered saving plan any better? Is my company's 401k? The problem that I see is that, prior to the creation of the 401k, people investing in the stock market were mainly investing thier own money. They were buying stocks because they thought the price was attractive, and they were careful because they alone carried the risk.
But, with 401ks, every week millions of people turn their money over to financial institutions who buy stocks for them. They can't simply sit on the money until a good deal comes along. Week after week, they must go out and purchase stocks. And, if they pick wrong, perhaps they get a smaller bonus, but they don't actually lose their own money.
Can our present financial woes be at least partially traced to the fact that so many of us are subscribing to a mostly blind investment? Are those enough smart enough to plan for our own retirement through these plans unwittingly helping to create market bubbles that will eventually destroy any value we've accumulated?
And if so, what can we possibly do to fix this?
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Did 9-11 change the world forever?
Did 9-11 change the world forever?
Perhaps, but what day doesn't?
The terrorist attacks of 9-11 created a lot of hub bub, but I would say that the world has been far more transformed by smart phones or the collapse of the housing bubble. It's true that we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives by letting the 9-11 attacks seduce us into two open-ended wars, but how much have these wars really changed the world? Afghanistan seems to be pretty much on the verge of reverting back to the exact state we found it in. Iraq seems temporarily stable, but it was stable when we went into it. It wasn't a threat to the world in 2002, and it's not a threat to the world now. Nor, despite our best efforts, does it appear to be a beacon of democracy for countries throughout the middle east to emulate. Instead, most of the arab revolutions taking place strike me as being closer to the Iranian model: Dictators who were liked by the West are being overthrown, and the governments that rise out of them don't seem like they are going to be particularly progressive. Of course, it's still early for many of these nations. I don't pretend to guess what they will look like thirty years from now.
My suspicion is, if they are more democratic and less "jihady," it will be because of smart phones, and not because of smart bombs.
Is America safer today than it was in 2001? I suppose that an airplane would be much more difficult to hijack today. (Has there been a successful airplane hijacking anywhere in the world during the last ten years?) On the other hand, we have a lot of evidence that if a terrorist wanted to be less spectacular in his efforts, he'd have little standing in his way to purchase a gun and walk into any business in America and open fire. But, perhaps terrorists don't think we'd be overy terrified if they followed this path. Given the flash mobs that started popping up in American cities this year (including Greensboro, at a park I've walked through a hundred times), we've gotten so good as a populace at inflicting random violence on ourselves, we've set the bar too high for international terrorists to compete.
I also remember reading in 2001 that Osama bin Laden was hoping that an attack on the World Trade Center would cripple the US economy. But it turns out that banks in collusion with congress had a far more effective strategy to accomplish this.
I don't want to down play the pain of the day. A lot of people died for no good reason at all. A lot of families were shattered. It was a tragedy by any objective or subjective standard. But, I think it's a good thing that, ten years later, its receded so much from national memory. As anyone who has lost a loved one discovers, life moves on. And I think this was the ultimate defeat for Bin Laden and his ilk. We don't hold national "Bin Laden" hate days. Most of us just went back to our lives. In the long run, all his grand designs have come to nothing.
Perhaps, but what day doesn't?
The terrorist attacks of 9-11 created a lot of hub bub, but I would say that the world has been far more transformed by smart phones or the collapse of the housing bubble. It's true that we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and lost thousands of lives by letting the 9-11 attacks seduce us into two open-ended wars, but how much have these wars really changed the world? Afghanistan seems to be pretty much on the verge of reverting back to the exact state we found it in. Iraq seems temporarily stable, but it was stable when we went into it. It wasn't a threat to the world in 2002, and it's not a threat to the world now. Nor, despite our best efforts, does it appear to be a beacon of democracy for countries throughout the middle east to emulate. Instead, most of the arab revolutions taking place strike me as being closer to the Iranian model: Dictators who were liked by the West are being overthrown, and the governments that rise out of them don't seem like they are going to be particularly progressive. Of course, it's still early for many of these nations. I don't pretend to guess what they will look like thirty years from now.
My suspicion is, if they are more democratic and less "jihady," it will be because of smart phones, and not because of smart bombs.
Is America safer today than it was in 2001? I suppose that an airplane would be much more difficult to hijack today. (Has there been a successful airplane hijacking anywhere in the world during the last ten years?) On the other hand, we have a lot of evidence that if a terrorist wanted to be less spectacular in his efforts, he'd have little standing in his way to purchase a gun and walk into any business in America and open fire. But, perhaps terrorists don't think we'd be overy terrified if they followed this path. Given the flash mobs that started popping up in American cities this year (including Greensboro, at a park I've walked through a hundred times), we've gotten so good as a populace at inflicting random violence on ourselves, we've set the bar too high for international terrorists to compete.
I also remember reading in 2001 that Osama bin Laden was hoping that an attack on the World Trade Center would cripple the US economy. But it turns out that banks in collusion with congress had a far more effective strategy to accomplish this.
I don't want to down play the pain of the day. A lot of people died for no good reason at all. A lot of families were shattered. It was a tragedy by any objective or subjective standard. But, I think it's a good thing that, ten years later, its receded so much from national memory. As anyone who has lost a loved one discovers, life moves on. And I think this was the ultimate defeat for Bin Laden and his ilk. We don't hold national "Bin Laden" hate days. Most of us just went back to our lives. In the long run, all his grand designs have come to nothing.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Are there holes in the theory of evolution?
A few weeks ago, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry referred to evolution as "a theory that's out there." There is nothing in his political history to indicate that he believes the theory to be accurate. Does this disqualify him from being president in my eyes? Probably not. Unlike, say, global warming, a politician's thoughts on evolution play a fairly trivial role in shaping political policy. There may be a few decisions around the margins about funding some vaccine or another, or permitting genetically modified crops, where it would be nice to have a president who has a firm grasp on the latest biology. Aside from this it seems like there isn't a lot of damage to be done. I'd vote for a candidate who believed life was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster if they could show me a plausible tax policy that would address this nations long term economic problems.
However, some on the right are apparently worried that Perry's views might be too much for a majority of voters. In response, right wing pundit Ann Coulter has taken the interesting approach of writing two columns lately attempting to prove that the theory of evolution has gaping holes in it. Worse, it is treated as gospel by an unthinking media, and never debated, so that the truth can come out showing that scientific facts actually disprove evolution and support intelligent design.
I thought I'd address a few of her points:
1. There's a media conspiracy not to question evolution:
First, I don't think there is such a thing as "media conspiracy" in the modern age. If you google "holes in evolution" you get 58 MILLION hits! It's being debated and challenged all the time. If none of the challenges gain traction, it's because none of them do as nice a job of explaining the biological evidence around us. But it's crazy to say that the challenges are hidden or supressed when anyone with a smartphone is ten seconds away from reading about the subject. Perhaps by "media" Ann means "television." Even Fox News doesn't run nightly debates on the topic the way they do about, say, global warming. But, global warming is a topic where getting the answer and the policy reactions right could decide the futures of whole nations. Under react to a genuine problem, and we might give our grand children a very ugly future. Over react to a phantom problem, and we might give our grand children a very ugly future. It's a high stakes debate with serious consequences.
Evolution, not so much. Let's pretend that, tomorrow morning, every biology professor in the world woke up and suddenly decreed that, oops, they've been wrong, and intelligent design is a better theory than natural selection. How would this affect our foreign policy? Our energy policy? Tax policy? While I advocate believing a good theory over a bad theory for purely intellectual reasons, I honestly don't think my daily life would be affected by a massive paradigm shift. It's just not worth devoting endless hours of television to the topic.
2: There are gaping holes in the fossil record. Every day, some "truth" about the fossil record is overturned by new evidence.
Well, duh. That's the thing about science. When you find evidence that you might be wrong about something, you present it, and alter your theories accordingly. You don't insist that the Piltdown Man is a genuine fossil after it's been shown to be a hoax. You don't continue to publish that chart showing similarities between embryoes of different animals once it's been proven that the truth had been twisted to fit a theory. Ann points out that the fossil record doesn't show constant, slow change, but instead shows long periods of stability followed by rapid change. Darwin believed that evolution was a slow, continuous process. But, most modern evolutionists now advocate a theory called "punctuated equilibrium." Basically, evolution slows to a crawl once organism fill the avalable niches in an stable ecosystem. But, eventually, continental plates collide creating land bridges, or an ice age sets in, or a comet smacks the earth, and the stable ecosystems go topsy turvy and explosive evolution follows as organism fill the new niches.
And, there are gaps in the fossil record. We live on a planet that is very good at erasing evidence of past life. The conditions to fossilize every creature that has ever lived simply don't exist, and never have. The picture of the past is always going to be fragmented when it comes to fossils.
However, fossils are only part of the story. A more powerful proof of evolution these days comes from genetics. Genetic trees showing links between animals we didn't believe were closely related have been overturning lineages built by examining fossils. Again, weak and wrongly interpretted evidence is readily tossed aside when better evidence comes along. This is the core of science. Can intelligent design theory point to any similar process for weeding out mistakes? If the flagellum of a given bacteria is self-evidently designed, is a nearly perfect cube of a salt cystal also evidence? Is everything designed? Even diseases and birth defects? Was Mars designed? Was Venus?
3. Intelligent design explains the evidence.
This is probably the saddest argument of all. Let us pretend for a moment that it's true. We develop some new imaging system and discover that, written on the surface of every electron with a very, very tiny magic marker are the words, "God was here." What can we conclude?
I fear the inevitable conclusion would have to be that creation really wasn't about us. The universe is filled with innumerable stars, far more stars than human beings. Our own solar system is filled with far more lifeless planets than places that support life. Our designer, it would seem, has a strong preference for quiet, dead, places. And, when he did get around to designing some life, he spent a very, very, very long time satisfied with single-celled organisms. The amount of time devoted to perfecting algae is impressive. Eventually he got around to making some jelly fish, some worms, some shell-fish. Much much later, he had the idea of crafting a spine, and introducing a new pattern of life to the world. Then, for a long time, he seemed pretty enamored with dinosaurs. But, apparently he got bored and moved on.
Only in the very tiniest sliver of geological time did he get around to creating men. For most of men's history, they were just another ape. A little more proficient at making tools than chimps, a little more complicated in social organizations than bonobos. Then, boom, in the blink of the geologic eye, these clever apes started building cities and writing books and reached a stage where they could debate whether they were the whole point of creation.
I have intelligently designed many books. For us to feel that we are the central focus of some grand designer of the universe is like a single period on page 300 of my novel Bitterwood feeling like it's the whole reason I sat down to type up the story. If we can deduce a designer from all of creation, then we must also deduce that we are, at best, an after thought. We are significant in neither time nor space nor number in the larger picture.
If we use intelligent design to study the universe, we must conclude that we are insignificant in the eyes of a creator. An atheistic interpretation of evolution deduces that there was no creator, and that through some rather remarkable strokes of luck, we've arisen from the background noise of the universe as the first beings ever to be capable of pondering our own existence. I find the latter to be a happy view, and the former to be depressing. And yet, if someone can produce evidence for intelligent design that better explains the world than our current theories, I'll accept it. Truth isn't to be judged by whether or not it makes me feel good about myself. I will gladly accept a difficult truth over a feel-good lie any day.
However, some on the right are apparently worried that Perry's views might be too much for a majority of voters. In response, right wing pundit Ann Coulter has taken the interesting approach of writing two columns lately attempting to prove that the theory of evolution has gaping holes in it. Worse, it is treated as gospel by an unthinking media, and never debated, so that the truth can come out showing that scientific facts actually disprove evolution and support intelligent design.
I thought I'd address a few of her points:
1. There's a media conspiracy not to question evolution:
First, I don't think there is such a thing as "media conspiracy" in the modern age. If you google "holes in evolution" you get 58 MILLION hits! It's being debated and challenged all the time. If none of the challenges gain traction, it's because none of them do as nice a job of explaining the biological evidence around us. But it's crazy to say that the challenges are hidden or supressed when anyone with a smartphone is ten seconds away from reading about the subject. Perhaps by "media" Ann means "television." Even Fox News doesn't run nightly debates on the topic the way they do about, say, global warming. But, global warming is a topic where getting the answer and the policy reactions right could decide the futures of whole nations. Under react to a genuine problem, and we might give our grand children a very ugly future. Over react to a phantom problem, and we might give our grand children a very ugly future. It's a high stakes debate with serious consequences.
Evolution, not so much. Let's pretend that, tomorrow morning, every biology professor in the world woke up and suddenly decreed that, oops, they've been wrong, and intelligent design is a better theory than natural selection. How would this affect our foreign policy? Our energy policy? Tax policy? While I advocate believing a good theory over a bad theory for purely intellectual reasons, I honestly don't think my daily life would be affected by a massive paradigm shift. It's just not worth devoting endless hours of television to the topic.
2: There are gaping holes in the fossil record. Every day, some "truth" about the fossil record is overturned by new evidence.
Well, duh. That's the thing about science. When you find evidence that you might be wrong about something, you present it, and alter your theories accordingly. You don't insist that the Piltdown Man is a genuine fossil after it's been shown to be a hoax. You don't continue to publish that chart showing similarities between embryoes of different animals once it's been proven that the truth had been twisted to fit a theory. Ann points out that the fossil record doesn't show constant, slow change, but instead shows long periods of stability followed by rapid change. Darwin believed that evolution was a slow, continuous process. But, most modern evolutionists now advocate a theory called "punctuated equilibrium." Basically, evolution slows to a crawl once organism fill the avalable niches in an stable ecosystem. But, eventually, continental plates collide creating land bridges, or an ice age sets in, or a comet smacks the earth, and the stable ecosystems go topsy turvy and explosive evolution follows as organism fill the new niches.
And, there are gaps in the fossil record. We live on a planet that is very good at erasing evidence of past life. The conditions to fossilize every creature that has ever lived simply don't exist, and never have. The picture of the past is always going to be fragmented when it comes to fossils.
However, fossils are only part of the story. A more powerful proof of evolution these days comes from genetics. Genetic trees showing links between animals we didn't believe were closely related have been overturning lineages built by examining fossils. Again, weak and wrongly interpretted evidence is readily tossed aside when better evidence comes along. This is the core of science. Can intelligent design theory point to any similar process for weeding out mistakes? If the flagellum of a given bacteria is self-evidently designed, is a nearly perfect cube of a salt cystal also evidence? Is everything designed? Even diseases and birth defects? Was Mars designed? Was Venus?
3. Intelligent design explains the evidence.
This is probably the saddest argument of all. Let us pretend for a moment that it's true. We develop some new imaging system and discover that, written on the surface of every electron with a very, very tiny magic marker are the words, "God was here." What can we conclude?
I fear the inevitable conclusion would have to be that creation really wasn't about us. The universe is filled with innumerable stars, far more stars than human beings. Our own solar system is filled with far more lifeless planets than places that support life. Our designer, it would seem, has a strong preference for quiet, dead, places. And, when he did get around to designing some life, he spent a very, very, very long time satisfied with single-celled organisms. The amount of time devoted to perfecting algae is impressive. Eventually he got around to making some jelly fish, some worms, some shell-fish. Much much later, he had the idea of crafting a spine, and introducing a new pattern of life to the world. Then, for a long time, he seemed pretty enamored with dinosaurs. But, apparently he got bored and moved on.
Only in the very tiniest sliver of geological time did he get around to creating men. For most of men's history, they were just another ape. A little more proficient at making tools than chimps, a little more complicated in social organizations than bonobos. Then, boom, in the blink of the geologic eye, these clever apes started building cities and writing books and reached a stage where they could debate whether they were the whole point of creation.
I have intelligently designed many books. For us to feel that we are the central focus of some grand designer of the universe is like a single period on page 300 of my novel Bitterwood feeling like it's the whole reason I sat down to type up the story. If we can deduce a designer from all of creation, then we must also deduce that we are, at best, an after thought. We are significant in neither time nor space nor number in the larger picture.
If we use intelligent design to study the universe, we must conclude that we are insignificant in the eyes of a creator. An atheistic interpretation of evolution deduces that there was no creator, and that through some rather remarkable strokes of luck, we've arisen from the background noise of the universe as the first beings ever to be capable of pondering our own existence. I find the latter to be a happy view, and the former to be depressing. And yet, if someone can produce evidence for intelligent design that better explains the world than our current theories, I'll accept it. Truth isn't to be judged by whether or not it makes me feel good about myself. I will gladly accept a difficult truth over a feel-good lie any day.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Crying Wolf in American Politics
Michelle Bachmann's best day of her political life and her worst day were probably one in the same. She rose to the very top of the pack of contenders for the GOP nomination by winning the Ames Straw Poll... and completely vanished from national media attention within 48 hours due to Rick Perry announcing his run from President the same day. Perry appeals to almost exactly the same voters who support her, but has an actual resume, having been governor of Texas for 11 years.
Nothing is certain in politics, but at this point, I have to assume that Perry will be the Republican nominee. He's got the red meat rhetoric that will fire up the base, an economic track record that fiscal conservatives can pull behind, and a state's rights view that libertarians like myself can find intriguing.
It's a rare day that I don't read about ten editorials on Real Clear Politics, and I have to sigh at the weary sameness of the attacks against Perry. They boil down to: 1. He's too religious and anti-science. 2. He's a radical right-winger. 3. He's racist. 4. He's dumb.
The thing is, these same labels have been stuck on every republican candidate since Reagan. I think that most voters just tune out these labels at this point. For what it's worth, I think that Republicans have mushed up the word liberal until it's almost meaningless. Bill Clinton was a fairly middle of the road politician who was called liberal every day he was in office. Barak Obama actually was liberal, but voters didn't seem to be afraid of liberalism any more, probably because the label had been overused. So, now the right has had to ramp up the rhetoric from liberal to socialist. One day, perhaps, it will provide the groundwork for electing a genuine socialist.
So what do I think of the four main charges?
1. He's too religious and anti-science. I'm not a bigot. Even though I'm an atheist, I think a man should be free to profess his religious beliefs. I'm just curious if Perry feels the same way. The first Bush said that he didn't think atheists could be patroits. I can't google any similar comments by Perry, but rest assured I'll be listening for this closely. As for being anti-science, he doesn't seem to believe in evolution, which is a strike in my opinion. But, he's really being attacked for denouncing man-made global warming as a hoax. I'm not prepared to call the theory a hoax. I think it's an interesting theory that explains a lot of evidence. But, I also think that people who say that the debate is settled are equally anti-science. There have been radical temperature changes in the past plainly not triggered by human action.
I want a president who is capable of thinking about science in a rational manner. I'm not sure Perry can do this. On the other hand, I don't doubt that Obama can think rationally, but what has it gained us? I'm not sure that understanding evolution helps make better decisions about, say, conducting unauthorized military operations in Libya.
2. He's a radical right-winger. He thinks social security is a Ponzi scheme. He thinks states should be free to chart their own courses on marriage and drugs and education. He thinks it's treasonous for the Fed to keep printing money. Will the American people put up with this? Who the hell knows. But, I read an article denouncing almost every idea put forth in Perry's book "Fed Up," and I found myself thinking that Perry was right almost every time. If he does stick to his guns, he will be presenting voters with their most conservative presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. But, his state's rights position, in my mind, provides a buffer against his most radical positions. It can shift the fights on social issues out of the federal level and back to the states.
3. He's racist. Some of the articles I've read treat Perry as the second coming of the Confederacy. Anyone who champions state's rights must deal with the problem that this was a code word in earlier times for allowing state sponsored segregation and oppression.
But, these aren't earlier times. The true meaning of the tenth ammendment strikes me as a fair constitutional debate. If there is any evidence that Perry holds racist views, I'm open to hearing it. So far, the attacks are remarkably unpersuasive.
4. He's dumb. Meh. As a certified smart person, I can tell you that raw intelligence is a vastly overrated commodity. I heard he had mediocre grades in college. So what? He's climbed up out of extremely modest beginnings and gone on to be elected governor of one of our largest states three times. I don't know if he's read Camus or can give even a short hand overview of quantum mechanics. He's demonstrated that he can govern a state without taking it completely off the rails. I don't think he's a genius, but I don't think most political decisions require genius.
So, after writing a reasonably pro-Perry column, do I intend to vote for him? Probably not. I've got a good track record going for voting Libertarian. In the past, my choices have been to vote for a Libertarian who can't win but who I agree with on 95% of issues, or a Democrat or Republican who will win but whom I disagree with on 95% of issues. I think I'd have to agree with Perry in the 30 to 40% range to switch loyalties. So far, I'm not there.
Nothing is certain in politics, but at this point, I have to assume that Perry will be the Republican nominee. He's got the red meat rhetoric that will fire up the base, an economic track record that fiscal conservatives can pull behind, and a state's rights view that libertarians like myself can find intriguing.
It's a rare day that I don't read about ten editorials on Real Clear Politics, and I have to sigh at the weary sameness of the attacks against Perry. They boil down to: 1. He's too religious and anti-science. 2. He's a radical right-winger. 3. He's racist. 4. He's dumb.
The thing is, these same labels have been stuck on every republican candidate since Reagan. I think that most voters just tune out these labels at this point. For what it's worth, I think that Republicans have mushed up the word liberal until it's almost meaningless. Bill Clinton was a fairly middle of the road politician who was called liberal every day he was in office. Barak Obama actually was liberal, but voters didn't seem to be afraid of liberalism any more, probably because the label had been overused. So, now the right has had to ramp up the rhetoric from liberal to socialist. One day, perhaps, it will provide the groundwork for electing a genuine socialist.
So what do I think of the four main charges?
1. He's too religious and anti-science. I'm not a bigot. Even though I'm an atheist, I think a man should be free to profess his religious beliefs. I'm just curious if Perry feels the same way. The first Bush said that he didn't think atheists could be patroits. I can't google any similar comments by Perry, but rest assured I'll be listening for this closely. As for being anti-science, he doesn't seem to believe in evolution, which is a strike in my opinion. But, he's really being attacked for denouncing man-made global warming as a hoax. I'm not prepared to call the theory a hoax. I think it's an interesting theory that explains a lot of evidence. But, I also think that people who say that the debate is settled are equally anti-science. There have been radical temperature changes in the past plainly not triggered by human action.
I want a president who is capable of thinking about science in a rational manner. I'm not sure Perry can do this. On the other hand, I don't doubt that Obama can think rationally, but what has it gained us? I'm not sure that understanding evolution helps make better decisions about, say, conducting unauthorized military operations in Libya.
2. He's a radical right-winger. He thinks social security is a Ponzi scheme. He thinks states should be free to chart their own courses on marriage and drugs and education. He thinks it's treasonous for the Fed to keep printing money. Will the American people put up with this? Who the hell knows. But, I read an article denouncing almost every idea put forth in Perry's book "Fed Up," and I found myself thinking that Perry was right almost every time. If he does stick to his guns, he will be presenting voters with their most conservative presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. But, his state's rights position, in my mind, provides a buffer against his most radical positions. It can shift the fights on social issues out of the federal level and back to the states.
3. He's racist. Some of the articles I've read treat Perry as the second coming of the Confederacy. Anyone who champions state's rights must deal with the problem that this was a code word in earlier times for allowing state sponsored segregation and oppression.
But, these aren't earlier times. The true meaning of the tenth ammendment strikes me as a fair constitutional debate. If there is any evidence that Perry holds racist views, I'm open to hearing it. So far, the attacks are remarkably unpersuasive.
4. He's dumb. Meh. As a certified smart person, I can tell you that raw intelligence is a vastly overrated commodity. I heard he had mediocre grades in college. So what? He's climbed up out of extremely modest beginnings and gone on to be elected governor of one of our largest states three times. I don't know if he's read Camus or can give even a short hand overview of quantum mechanics. He's demonstrated that he can govern a state without taking it completely off the rails. I don't think he's a genius, but I don't think most political decisions require genius.
So, after writing a reasonably pro-Perry column, do I intend to vote for him? Probably not. I've got a good track record going for voting Libertarian. In the past, my choices have been to vote for a Libertarian who can't win but who I agree with on 95% of issues, or a Democrat or Republican who will win but whom I disagree with on 95% of issues. I think I'd have to agree with Perry in the 30 to 40% range to switch loyalties. So far, I'm not there.
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Worse than Racist
So, last week, it was announced that in the Ultimate Spiderman comic, Peter Parker is being killed off and replaced by a half-black/half-latino teenager named Miles Morales. My immediate reaction was... again?
Not because Spiderman has been replaced with a black character before, but because the list of superheroes who've been replaced by black characters, at least temporarily, is at this point an exceedingly long one.
Just off the top of my head, Superman was replaced by John Henry Irons. Green Lantern was replaced by John Stewart. Firestorm, replaced by black man. Wildcat, replaced by black woman. (Or was she hispanic? Memory fails.) Mr. Terrific is now black. The Invisible Kid from Legion of Superheroes was a black frenchman. Later, Element Lad got the melanin makeover. Green Arrow was replaced by a bastard son whose ethnicity tended to drift based on what artist portrayed him. Mister Miracle, briefly black. The Blue Beetle has also had a race change. Over at Marvel, Goliath became Black Goliath. Captain Marvel was replaced with a black woman. Iron Man was replaced by Rhodey. In the Ultimate Universe, Nick Fury is black.
I cannot deny that comic books for a very long time were dominated by white characters. Hell, between the Hulk and Brainiac Five, there were more green-skinned superheroes than black ones. And, when comics tried to rectify this, they gave us cringe-inducing attempts like the first run at Black Lightning. I can see the temptation to say, "Look! We're not racist! We've got a black Superman! How cool is that?"
The problem, of course, is that these characters always turn out to be benchwarmers and second stringers. Iron Man is black only long enough for readers to clamor for the return of Tony Stark. Sometimes, the black replacements are set up as heroes in their own right. War Machine, Steel, and Black Goliath all got their own books, and all flopped. These characters are just set up to fail.
I don't seriously think the comic creators who make these decisions to revamp white superheroes as black superheroes do so with any racist intent. I'm sure they actually intend to promote diversity and cultural understanding. But, at this point, they are committing a sin worse than racism. They are serving us cliches. It's been almost thirty years since Goliath became Black Goliath. I think at this point, the black hero replaces white hero story has been done to death. Maybe, just maybe, the key to getting more black heroes into comics is to just create some new heroes with some new stories?
Not because Spiderman has been replaced with a black character before, but because the list of superheroes who've been replaced by black characters, at least temporarily, is at this point an exceedingly long one.
Just off the top of my head, Superman was replaced by John Henry Irons. Green Lantern was replaced by John Stewart. Firestorm, replaced by black man. Wildcat, replaced by black woman. (Or was she hispanic? Memory fails.) Mr. Terrific is now black. The Invisible Kid from Legion of Superheroes was a black frenchman. Later, Element Lad got the melanin makeover. Green Arrow was replaced by a bastard son whose ethnicity tended to drift based on what artist portrayed him. Mister Miracle, briefly black. The Blue Beetle has also had a race change. Over at Marvel, Goliath became Black Goliath. Captain Marvel was replaced with a black woman. Iron Man was replaced by Rhodey. In the Ultimate Universe, Nick Fury is black.
I cannot deny that comic books for a very long time were dominated by white characters. Hell, between the Hulk and Brainiac Five, there were more green-skinned superheroes than black ones. And, when comics tried to rectify this, they gave us cringe-inducing attempts like the first run at Black Lightning. I can see the temptation to say, "Look! We're not racist! We've got a black Superman! How cool is that?"
The problem, of course, is that these characters always turn out to be benchwarmers and second stringers. Iron Man is black only long enough for readers to clamor for the return of Tony Stark. Sometimes, the black replacements are set up as heroes in their own right. War Machine, Steel, and Black Goliath all got their own books, and all flopped. These characters are just set up to fail.
I don't seriously think the comic creators who make these decisions to revamp white superheroes as black superheroes do so with any racist intent. I'm sure they actually intend to promote diversity and cultural understanding. But, at this point, they are committing a sin worse than racism. They are serving us cliches. It's been almost thirty years since Goliath became Black Goliath. I think at this point, the black hero replaces white hero story has been done to death. Maybe, just maybe, the key to getting more black heroes into comics is to just create some new heroes with some new stories?
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