Week Three Addendum

I got my bloodwork results in the mail today. Results were even better than expected! Last year, most of my cholesteral numbers were right on the borderline of being high, with a few meandering over the line into the low reaches of the danger zones.

Now, all my numbers are well in the midpoint of the recommended ranges. My resting blood sugar has also improved away from being borderline worrisome. Since my father was diabetic and died of heart disease, getting these numbers down is a pretty smart move on my part.

Just returned from a three mile hike which we went ahead and did despite the fact it was raining. If it wasn't raining, we probably had it in us to go a bit further. We are really lucky to have some excellent trails in this area.

Week Three

Weigh in today: 267.

Can I hit 264 by next Thursday? I know I'll probably plateau soon. But, for now, I'm happy with my results. I really think the biggest key to my success is my smart phone. Logging everything I eat, and being able to research instantly the calorie choices before me, are key. Today I had a situation where I couldn't come home until late and had to eat dinner out. Thanks to my smart phone, I was able to look up all the calorie counts for the entire menu at PF Changs while I was sitting in the parking lot and when I went in I was able to place an order for lettuce wraps and a bowl of soup that were well within my calorie budget. Especially in a restaurant where a lot of the food is prepared with different sauces, having the mystery removed of how many calories I was consuming was pretty empowering.

Onward! (Or downward, as the case may be.)

Week Two

Today at work I weighed in at 271 pounds. That's 13 pounds gone since starting my dietary changes two weeks ago. I'm less than a week away from my next physical, and I'm really interested in seeing the bloodwork. I've been eating a high fiber, high protein, low carb and low fat diet, so I'm expecting all my numbers to look good except for sodium. I've always eaten a lot of salt, but I suspect it's representing an even higher percentage of my diet these days, since I'm avoiding all sweet snacks and sticking with salty ones; ie, I eat beef jerky instead of Snickers during breaks at work.

I'm trying to get Cheryl to eat tofu, but it's an uphill climb. I personally like tofu, and have since long before starting this diet. I eat it in a lot of dishes at asian restaurants, and would be perfectly happy recreating these dishes at home. Alas, Cheryl doesn't like any of the various textures it comes in. I currently have been experimenting with extra firm tofu, which to me has the texture of a firm cheese, but, I must admit, it's also a texture that resembles biting through a pencil eraser. Not that I've done that. I'm not that hungry.

Which is my biggest surprise. I've had few moments since starting this when I've really been hungry. A lot of my food consumption patterns were built on habit instead of actual physical need. Some of my coworkers go outside to smoke during breaks. I would go to the break room and eat an ice cream sandwich. (I work next to a DollarTree... they sell ice cream sandwiches in boxes of 4 for a dollar. You can eat a lot of ice cream sandwiches for pocket change.)

I can't yet figure out if eating healthy is costing me more or less than my old dietary habits. Last week's trip to the farmer's market wasn't cheap. The whole grain flatbread with flax seed I've been buying is a heck of a lot more expensive ounce for ounce than an ordinary loaf of bread. Beef jerky costs a heck of a lot more than a candy bar. On the other hand, we've eaten out much, much less. I suspect in the long run we're saving money.

Okay, enough writing. Time to hit the treadmill for the evening. I want to make sure that at weigh in next week, the second digit on my weight will be a six. 

Week One

I weighed in today at 274 pounds. Losing ten pounds in a week is a nice start, but I'm realistic that the path ahead won't be quite as easy. Still, what's surprising is that, so far, it hasn't been all that hard.

I've gone cold turkey on soft drinks. The only liquid I've drank in the last week with any calories are V8 and tom yum soup. Coke and Mountain Dew have been my weakness for decades. This is the first time an entire week has passed without me partaking of either.

The withdrawal from the caffiene gave me a dull headache the first few days, but now I'm pretty much over it. Many days I was drinking over 1000 calories of this stuff. I knew it was insane, and I'm damn lucky I'm not already diabetic. I feel good about resisting the siren call of sodas for the foreseeable future.

I'm also over pizza, at least the mass market produced stuff. I work next door to a Little Caeser's pizza, and once or twice a week would grab a pizza for lunch. Some days I'd eat the whole pizza. How was it I managed not to weight 300 pounds already?

The competition factor of losing more weight than my coworkers over the next three months is still extremely motivational. Basically, I've transformed work from the place I used to have my worst eating habits to a place that is keeping me focused on my goals.

I've also got the help of my wife, Cheryl, who is 100% behind rethinking out meals at home. We've both signed up for My Fitness Pal, an android ap that lets us track all the calories we consume in a day on our phones. So far, I've met my goals every day with room to spare. The act of recording all the food I'm eating really makes me stop and think about everything I put in my mouth.

We bought a used treadmill from Habitat for Humanity and have done a decent amount of walking. I'm planning to add some weight training soon. I've got a doctor's appointment on the 25th. I'm looking forward to seeing what he thinks of my current weight loss goals. So far, I feel like I'm on a good path.

Lifestyle changes ahead

I'm fat.

For the first half of my life, I had the exact opposite problem. When I was a sophomore in college, I only weighed 140 pounds. This, on a 6'2" frame gave me a rather scarecrowish appearance. I really was self-conscious about how skinny I was. I tried a lot of strategies for bulking up. I lifted weights and I ate ravenously. I could eat an entire large pizza and drink a two liter soda on my own and still have room for a bag of chips. It didn't matter. I remained skinny as a sideshow freak.

Then, in my twenties, some kind of switch went off in my body and suddenly I started to pack on pounds. I hit thirty weighing about 220, and was reasonably happy with the way I looked.

If I had stopped at 220, everything would be fine. Alas, through my thirties and forties, I've continued to add to my girth. I now weigh 283 pounds, twice as much as I weighed in college. It's not difficult to figure out how I got here.

1. I never gave up my eating habits from college. I still can eat a whole pizza if the spirit moves, and it's not unheard of for me to go through a 2 liter soda in the course of an evening.

2. I'm sedentary. I do work a day job that keeps me on my feet, but it's in a very small area. I don't move around that much. On my days off and in my evenings, I sit in front of a computer and write novels, an even more sedentary occupation. I do occasionally go hiking, bike riding, and canoeing, but seldom more than once or twice a month.

3. I have some physical challenges. Over a decade ago, I was diagnosed with a thyroid deficiency. I treated it for a while, but eventually stopped taking the medicine because I didn't feel any effect. Last year, my condition worsened, from a state of mild deficiency to severe deficiency. I'm finally back on medication, but I still carry weight I put on when I wasn't treating my problem. Also, from childhood until my forties, I suffered from allergies and asthma. Any kind of vigorous excercise would trigger an asthma attack. But, for reasons that I can't explain, my asthma just disappeared about five years ago. It can still be triggered if I'm around too much cigarette smoke, but physical activity doesn't produce even a wheeze. And, claritin has mostly taken care of the allergies.

Finally, I've suspected for a long time I had sleep apnea. I had a sleep study years ago, but failed to sleep due to all the wires taped to my scalp and the fact the study took place on a bed that felt like cinderblocks with a sheet draped over them. That study cost a lot of money, so I wasn't eager to pay for another sleepless night, which explains why I waited over a decade before again agreeing it was something I needed to check out. It wasn't my physical symptoms that worried me as much as my mental symptoms. My short term memory has become terrible. This is a sypmtom of sleep apnea, caused by lower oxygen levels, and my oxygen levels were getting down below 75% at night, according to my latest sleep study. But, even though if was fear for the integrity of my mind that pushed me into treatment, I also know that my body suffered because of the apnea. I just felt tired all the time because I never got a good night's sleep.

So, why now?

We just got a new floor mounted shipping scale at work. And, of course, the second it was installed, everyone started weighing themselves. I'm the second heaviest person on my job. But, I'm not the only one overweight, and so several of my coworkers are going to compete for the next three months to see who can lose the most weight. I'm in!

Why I think I can lose the weight:

First, I've started on a CPAP machine two weeks ago. I'm still learning how to sleep with the machine, but early results are promising. I'll be starting this weight loss competition getting full nights of restful sleep, something I haven't had in ages. I'm hoping this will translate into more energy for excercise.

Second, my other physical issues, the thyroid deficiency and the allergies, are mostly under control with medication. I don't feel like my body is actively fighting my efforts to make it healthier.

Third, after many years of struggle, I'm finally breaking my addiction to cola. I've never liked diet cola, and know that drinking sugar water at meals and between meals has been disasterous for my health. But, last spring, I stumbled onto a mineral water called Topo Chico that has zero calories and that I enjoy drinking. I've sampled other seltzer waters since, and have discovered that plain old Food Lion brand seltzer water is pretty satisfying. I've already stopped buying sodas and drinking them at home, but tend to drink Mountain Dew at work for the caffeine boost. But, I needed the caffeine partly because I was so tired from not getting good sleep. I'm stocking my work locker with seltzer water and making a go at not drinking soda during the day. I think I can make it because work is where I'm in the weight loss competition, and I'm pretty competetive. Once I tell people I'm giving up soda, being seen drinking a Mountain Dew would be losing face. Eliminating soda is going to cut almost 800 calories a day from my diet. That's a pretty good foundation to work from.

Cheryl is on board in changing our menu here at the house. A lot less homemade ice-cream is in our future, alas. A lot more leafy greens, which is cool, since we both actually like leafy greens.

But, changing my diet won't matter much if I don't start exercising properly. Luckily, the timing of the competition is pretty good for me. Fall is the time of year I'm most active outside. Hiking in July in North Carolina is a difficult chore due to the heat. Fall is when we already did most of our outdoor activity. There's a lot of additional walking in my immediate future.

Despite the fact that there's a competition that's triggering my effort to shed some weight, I'm doing it primarily because I just want to feel better and be healthier. My goal is to lose about 1.5 pounds a week. That's only about 20 pounds in three months; probably not enough to win the contest, but hopefully a realistic enough lifestyle change that I can get back below 240 pounds by next spring. This isn't about how much I can lose in three months. It's about whether or not I can treat my body better in the long run and have more years of productive, active life.

One reason I'm posting this here on my blog is that I'm hoping a public declaration will help me keep on track. I don't want to come back here next month and announce I've gained three pounds! And, I've also been giving a lot of thought to the kinds of essays I post here, and feel like I may have run my course on writing about politics. I feel like I've spelled out my political philosophies pretty thoroughly over the years, and just have run out of interesting things to say. (Partly, this is because our current crop of politics have stopped debating interesting topics.) But there's a lot more to life than politics, so I'm going to shift to topics a bit more personal. Stay tuned!

A few thoughts on Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand has been in the news lately since Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan is on record as saying that his thoughts on government have been influenced by her.

I read Atlas Shrugged when I was in my late twenties and can honestly say I count it among the handful of books that truly shaped the way I live my life. Before reading Atlas Shrugged, I mostly described myself as an agnostic. People seemed more accepting of this than of outright atheism. Agnosticism seems to leave some wiggle room, saying, "I don't know if I'm right, and I can't say if you're wrong." Rand's forceful arguments against religion really knocked me off that fence into full-fledged public atheism. If it made other people like me less, so be it. What was important was that I was honest with myself and with others, which in the end made me happier than when I hid part of myself.

The fact I read Rand and came out a confident atheist is why I find it bizarre that so many of her biggest fans are right-wing Republicans. Yeah, she hated collectivism, and sure she was pro-capitalism, but most of all she was pro-reason. For her faith-based thinking was weak-minded failure. She was also strongly in favor of abortion rights, refusing to see how an unthinking mass of cells could have rights that trumped the rights of an adult woman. If she were still alive today, no Republican who dreamed of getting votes would ever dare be photographed shaking hands with her in public. But, it's okay to have her on a bookshelf, since then you can treat Atlas Shrugged like a second Bible, picking and choosing the parts you wish to live by, ignoring the rest.

Of course, I pick and choose from her writings as well. I love her defense of reason, and whole-heartedly agree that the individual's highest virtue is to pursue his own happiness. Some people denounce this as selfishness, but I've never found the conflict. I don't see how my happiness or success harms anyone else.

I also think that the brand of capitalism she presents in Atlas Shrugged is a virtuous one far removed from what's practiced today. And while a lot of people feel that she celebrated wealth, they ignore that many of her central characters pass up wealth to pursue their dreams. You don't have to read between the lines to see that she thought that the pursuit of wealth was not the same goal as the pursuit of happiness, and many of her villains are those whose lives are driven purely by material things.

Where I jump ship with Rand is, ultimately, her blind faith in reason. The worst parts of Atlas Shrugged are the romances, which unfold under the veneer of logic. When the heroine dumps one boyfriend for a different man, everyone involved agrees it's the rational, sensible thing to do, and there are no hurt feelings. Her happiness is a rational happiness, but real life happiness is often completely independent of logic. I may be an atheist, but I'm also a realist, and humans have evolved to operate more on faith and emotion than reason. Reason is often called in in the aftermath of a decision made on instinct in order to explain or justify it, but I believe it isn't a driving force behind most human activities.

Nor should it be. Reason is an intellectual tool that provides useful insights into the world and can help guide us in decisions. But, we are, deep in our DNA, mere animals, and plenty of good can come from following our animal instincts. For instance, right now, while writing this, I've started feeling hungry. So I'm going to eat a sandwich. And I'll be happy about it, even though there are people in the world who don't have sandwiches. Does that make me selfish?

Social Darwinism

Robert Reich had an opinion column after the Paul Ryan pick for VP in which he said, "Ryan exemplifies the social Darwinism at the core of today’s Republican Party: Reward the rich, penalize the poor, let everyone else fend for themselves."

I've gone on to read the "social Darwinism" label in a half dozen other editorials, but it was Reich's definition that really got me thinking about government and it's relationship with the poor, the rich, and everyone else.

First of all, I think in terms of where money is actually spent, the vast, vast bulk of our spending goes to the "everyone else" category. Social security and medicare go to elderly people regardless of income. Combined, they make up about 44% of our budget. The next biggest slice of the pie is defense, at almost 25% of the budget, but this again seems to be an "everyone else" program. In theory, we all share equally in the benefits (and liabilities).

Welfare, which we would think of mostly as money going to the poor, is about 12% of the budget.

The rewards to the rich are much more difficult to quantify. A lot of their income is taxed different and at a much lower rate than ordinary income. They obviously also benefit the most from a low inheritance tax rate. Mortgage rate deductions also benefit the wealthy more than the poor or even the middle class. If you have a million dollar mortgage, you get a much bigger tax break than if you live in a double-wide. The wealthy also don't pay as much in social security taxes, since there's a wage cap on how much income is taxed. But the most expensive tax break I could find was the one for employer provided health insurance. It's true that corporations get the bulk of this tax break, but I would say that most people with employer provided health insurance probably fall into the middle class. The wealthy also sometimes avoid taxes via tax shelters, storing their money offshore. The Planet Money podcast recently did an article about this, and it's apparently fairly easy to do. But, since the top 1% of tax payers pay 37% of all income taxes, they obviously aren't hiding all their money overseas. Still, I'm willing to say that that the reason our tax code is so convoluted and confusing is because wealthy special interests spend a lot of money to tinker with it to give them advantages. My gut guess is that all the tax breaks probably add up to a much greater sum than all the money spent on welfare, but who knows?

I will say that, in classical government budget theory, you tax stuff you want less of and spend money on stuff you want more of. So, the government has a high tax on cigarettes, for instance, to drive up the cost and discourage smoking. While it's a tiny percentage of government spending, we want solar and wind power, so we spend money on these industries and give them tax advantages.

So, why do these theories not apply to wealth and poverty? If Reich is unhappy that Republicans would reward the rich and punish the poor, is he advocating that the government reward the poor and punish the rich? If we subsidise poverty by increasing spending, don't we actually increase poverty? If we punish the rich with higher tax rates, don't we just encourage them to report less and less income?

Keep in mind that I'm not a Republican. I already know that, this fall, I'll be voting for Gary Johnson on the libertarian ticket. The Ryan budget that Reich finds so draconian doesn't actually eliminate deficit spending until 2040! Nor have Romney or Ryan made any specific proposals of how they would simplify the tax code to eliminate all the loopholes, most of which represent governmental tinkering with free markets by favoring one industry over another. (For instance, the health insurance tax break favors employees of corporations over self-employed people. Or, subsidies that encourage the growth of corn over other crops.)

One final note: If you don't believe in social Darwinism, do you believe in social Intelligent Design?

A little late to the "you didn't build that" party...

I'm late to the party on the whole "you didn't build that" controversy. Obama's statement at first struck me as just very poor phrasing. I dislike the whole "gotcha" sound-bite culture that our political campaigns have become. Obama has an actual record of policy at this point--not exactly a glowing one--but any substantive criticism of his record is going to disappear under a wave of phrases stripped from their full context. The flip will be true of Romney as well. The hours devoted to actual laws he's proposing will be swamped by the hours dedicated to playing the sound bite of him saying he likes to fire people.

But, there's something that I want to address in the larger context of Obama's remark. As I understand the spin of what he meant to say, his argument is that no one builds a successful business of their own. Successful businesses exist in the context of good infrastructure. Obama mentioned roads and the internet, but I would add to this list an impartial legal system, good public education, and a peaceful, safe, and inclusive society.

Assuming that Obama was talking about this sort of infrastructure, I think it makes his comment even worse. Because, yes, we did build it together, using our taxes and our civic participation. And when you are driving on a public highway and get pulled over, no one ever checks your tax returns to find out if you've paid your fair share. They reality is, the roads are mostly neutral; a man who earns minimum wage gets to drive on the same interstates as the wealthiest people in our nation. The only one who really gets to drive alone on the highway, as near as I can tell, is the president himself.

So, we did build the infrastructure, and we all have equal access to it. The poorest child in America can get a library card. I certainly did, and my parents were definitely on the low, low end of the economic scale.

Honestly, despite all my libertarian leanings, I'm a big fan of good government. I want good roads, I want clean water and air, I want the trash picked up on time and the streets to be safe to walk on. I want every child to learn to read and write and have opportunities to pursue their education as far as they want to take it.

The problem is that, once you admit that government can do some good, some people would then argue that even more government creates even greater good. But, there's a point of diminishing returns. For instance, I think government has done a good job of making college more accessible. The down side is, a lot of colleges have dumbed down their requirements to pull in more students. And, a lot of people graduate from college with degrees that aren't worth a heck of a lot. And, as government has intervened to see that more and more people are given grants and access to loans to go to college, most colleges have responded simply by increasing their tuition.

I suspect the same is true of medical expenses. The more government puts money into the system, the more expensive the system gets.

I personally don't despise paying taxes. I recognize that things like schools, prisons, and parks cost money and improve the quality of my life. But, I do dislike throwing money down a well. It bugs me that so many of my tax dollars go to paying interest on debts we shouldn't have incurred. It bugs me that my tax dollars fund wars at costs disproportionate to the threats we are avoiding.

And yet, the truth of all this waste is that we built that too. We keep electing people willing to run up deficits and line the pockets of their closest donors. The most conservative politician in America will vow to vote against expanding Medicare, but ask them to close an outdated military base or stop building a plane that the air force no longer wants and suddenly money is no object.

Our government isn't going to change until we as a people change. Step one will be to stop obsessing over soundbites and stop treating government like a team sport. It's time for us a nation to say, yeah, I helped build this... and now it's time to help fix it.

Has Global Warming been Debunked?

I've long been skeptical of the theory that global warming is man-made. More accurately, I've long been skeptical of the evidence. The theory itself seems reasonable. We live in what is essentially a very, very big greenhouse. The temperature of the air we breathe is determined in part by the mix of gasses present in our atmosphere. Water vapor traps a lot of heat, as does methane, and, to a much smaller degree, carbon dioxide. We live in an era when modern life is changing the ratio of all of these gasses. We are liberating carbon that has long been trapped beneath the surface. Our modern agriculture has specialized in producing animals that produce a lot of methane. And even water vapor has new outlets into the atmosphere thanks to human activity, as anyone who has ever driven past a factory belching steam must surely have noticed. A lot of that water is taken from ancient aquifers far below ground, with molecules that haven't had a shot at the sky for millions of years,

But, of course, nothing is simple. Sure, our livestock farts out a lot of methane, but so did bisons and passenger pigeons, and we turned off those spigots. We may pull a lot of carbon out of the ground as coal and oil, but we take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere by cutting down forests to build houses and print books. The new forests that grow in the wake of our activities pull a lot of carbon out of the air. As for water vapor, there is so much water in the atmosphere that human actions can barely be measured.

As for whether the world is getting warmer, I think that's pretty well established. There's a long set of non-biased data that point to a fairly consistent warming trend, at least in the northern hemisphere, dating back to the 1850s. But, of course, this follows a centuries long cooling trend known as the "Little Ice Age." The problem with figuring out if human actions lead to climate change is that there is no such thing as climate stability. Our present warming trend could just be part of the background variation inherent in our climate.

But, perhaps because some global warming proponents are seizing on our current heat wave as evidence of man made climate change, I've noticed some skeptics adopting some of the same religious ferver they denounce in their opponents. The other day, I read an article talking about how all the various climate models on computers had been debunked. If the computers got it wrong, there's no man-made climate change! None! But, that argument is a false one if you give it even half a moments thought. The reality of changing climate has nothing at all to do with the existence of good computer models. The mastodons didn't look once at a chart showing the ice age might be coming to an end, but it ended anyway. Just because we can't model the effects of human activity upon the atmosphere isn't evidence that there aren't any such effects.

I think skepticism is healthy. Being skeptical of your own skepticism isn't a bad thing either. It's easy to argue against man-made global warming just for the satisfaction of poking holes in the near religious certainty of the proponents. The sky-is-falling doomsday predictions are fun to shoot down. But, don't lose sight of a simple truth: Natural variation might explain all the climate change we've experienced in recent centuries. But, it's also just as valid to argue that natural variation might mask genuine long term harm we're inflicting upon the earth by tweaking the atmosphere a little more each year. Cool-headed, reasoned certainty that man isn't causing long term climate change seems to me to be just as foolish a position as feverish certainty that we are.

If I may use a few analogies, climate change alarmists may be Chicken-Littles, panicking over a random string of hot days. But climate change skeptics might be the proverbial frog in the pot of water, never taking action to save themselves as the temp climbs slowly to boiling.

Thoughts on the Health Care ruling

It looks like I let June be my first month since starting this blog without a post. Sorry. I have a deadline of July 31 to turn in my next book, Witchbreaker, but due to buying a house, renovating it, and moving in, I basically wrote almost nothing on the project between mid-March and mid-May. Fortunately, when panic finally sets in, I can crank out some words, and I just finished the second draft yesterday. So, I'm taking a few days before jumping into the third draft to catch up on some of the stuff I've let fall by the wayside during my writing frenzy.

I used to write about politics frequently on this blog, but my enthusiasm for politics has waned in recent years. I used to have this vague, half-formed hope that as our countries problems worsened, we'd finally have some leaders step up to pull us back to a path of sanity. I took some amusement from the cowardice, hypocrisy, and stupidy of elected officials because it reinforced my libertarian prejudices that government just messes everything up.

But all joy sort of seeped away during the unending Republican primaries. Amusement changed to terror as I realized our next president might be the oops guy, the pizza guy, the crazy lady, the religious nut, the wife-leaver, or the spineless rich guy. Sweet merciful jesus, has a political party ever fielded a worse slate of candidates? Ron Paul was okay, but he was doomed by crazy talk, i.e., explaining his true beliefs clearly and plainly without shaping them to make them more palatable to his audience. Romney makes his opinions palatable by seeming not to have any. He doesn't like Obama's temporary immigration fix, and says he wants a permanent solution... without saying what that will be. He wants to repeal and replace Obamacare... but replace with what? He claims he understands the economy, but if he has any ideas beyond cutting taxes I haven't heard them.

Meanwhile, Obamacare. I have to admit, I didn't expect the individual mandate to be upheld, and I certainly didn't expect that it would be Roberts that pushed it over the top. But, I do think there's a fundamental honesty in calling the "penalty" a tax. And, if even once in the bill it had been called a tax, there's no question it would have been constitutional. I'm deeply offended, even outraged, that elected representatives might vote to tax me for things I might not do (like having health insurance), but I can't deny that the constitution grants congress the power to levy taxes.

And, I did appreciate what I thought was the most important sentence in Robert's ruling: It's not the court's job to protect the public from the consequences of their political choices. Robert was basically slapping the American public in the face and shouting, "If you don't like this law, vote for people who will overturn it. Don't come crying to us!"

So, should we vote for people to overturn the law? My immediate impulse is yes, completely, 100%. The law is too complex, and way too expensive. I have little doubt that it's a drag on the economy that's making companies reluctant to hire people. And, because of the individual mandate, unemployed people no longer have the option of trying to start their own business. As someone self-employed as a writer, I can tell you that my income is marginal and unpredictable enough that it would be extremely difficult for me to pay a monthly health care premium. I do have a day job, and get my health care coverage through this. But, like most writers, I dream about quitting my day job. It's possible that, if I did so, I might be taking a gamble on having a few years uninsured. Lots of people do this, and, if you're in good health, and young enough, it's often a gamble that pays off. You go without insurance while you're starting your small business and ten years later, when your hard work is finally paying off, you get insurance.

Now, with the individual mandate, you can't have those just-scraping-by years to launch your own business because you either need to earn enough to buy insurance, or you get charged a hefty tax. This is going to be a burden discouraging millions of people from trying to be their own boss. The law tilts the employment playing field in favor of large corporations, who get the best insurance rates. But, of course, now the large corporations don't want to hire as many people, because the law also removes things like payment caps, meaning any given employee can be a time bomb just waiting to explode into multi-million dollar health care price tags.

On the other hand, if Obamacare truly does cause more people to have insurance, maybe this will keep down the costs. If we add more healthy young people, it subsidizes sicker old people. I think the costs of the plan outweight the benefits, but at this point I'm open to the argument that we need to try something. If Romney wants to repeal and replace, let me hear about the replace.

My libertarian instincts are that the best path available to lower health care costs would be tort reform and insurance deregulation. But, I also think there may be room for some federal action, though, perversely, it's probably action that's the opposite of what they would do. My wife works for a hospital, and as near as I can tell, 10% of her job is directly involved with providing drugs to customers, and 90% of her job involves filling out paperwork. Two weeks ago, I injured my hand at work, a fairly deep cut from a box cutter that was over an inch long. The treatment of the cut was pretty simple. They basically glued it shut and sent me on my way. But, I had to talk to my help line at work before I went, which involved 20 minutes of talking on the phone to a nurse who asked me a ton of information, then going to the urgent care center where I had to fill out paperwork asking almost exactly the same questions. Meanwhile, my boss had his own paperwork to fill out. Couldn't there be an infrastructure created that removed all this redundancy? And why is their paperwork at all? Anything I fill in on a sheet of paper is presumably being transfered to a computer by someone. Instead of handing me a clipboard, why not hand me a tablet computer that already has 90% of my data already filled in after my insurance card has been scanned, leaving me only to answer questions about my immediate problem?

Improved technology has cut down my costs for communication and acquiring information in almost every aspect of my life. Only in healthcare does the increasing technology seem to be driving costs up instead of down. Why?

Maybe over regulation and overlitigation has created most of these problems. Or, maybe complexity just makes change more difficult. I don't think Obamacare improves the complexity, and may actually increase it. But, does repeal lead to improvement? Or just a return to an already horrible status quo?

New house photos!

We've finally reached a point in our move where we've carted off the 5000 card board boxes that formed a maze in our living area and are able to take some photos:

 Our living room. Big skylights make the room feel bright and open. Pay no attention to the photos sitting on the floor instead of hanging on the wall.  

We picked the rug based on the colors of our cats... 

 We have a dining room! We can eat like civilized people instead of on the couch! 

 The deck as seen from the dining room window. The deck's bigger than our old living room.

 Our kitchen. When we bought it, there were no appliances and half the cabinet doors were missing.

 We plan to fill the long hallway with art and photos. Also, cats.

 The guest bathroom doubles as an art gallery.

 The guest bedroom. Oscar, the black and white cat, is stalking me as I take photos.

My office. And Oscar. He's ubiquitous. 

Look! Up on the wall!

The master bathroom, or parts of it, at least. 

The master bedroom. You can see the new bamboo floor we had installed. The ceiling fan is also new. Also, the white cat on the bed is kind of new. She was an outdoor cat at our old house who's very quickly figured out how to use furniture now that we've brought her inside. 

Yesterday's Progress Toward Legalizing Gay Marriage

So, gay marriage advocates had a bad day in North Carolina yesterday. Or did they? Roughly 40% of voters came out and voted against an amendment to ban same-sex unions. 40% acceptance is a pretty amazing figure considering that 30 years ago, if there had been google, and if you'd googled the phrase "same sex marriage" you would have gotten probably zero hits. The idea was not only not being debated thirty years ago, it wasn't even a thing people knew would be a debate.
As much as same sex marriage advocates promote the idea as a fundamental human right, the reality is we are asking for a radical change in human thinking. We are asking society to officially sanction a relationship model that has never been accepted before recent decades. We honestly don't know what changes will come to society by adopting this new idea. I'm optimistic that most changes will be positive, but I'm also certain there are unknown unknowns.

For instance, gay marriage could have the perverse effect of eliminating homosexuality. Assuming that homosexuality is a genetic trait, it's being passed down from generation to generation. Until recent decades, societal pressures have forced majorities of homosexuals to hide their true natures. Countless homosexuals get married to opposite sex partners and have children. This keeps the genes for homosexuality in the genetic pool.

But, if homosexuals no longer enter into show marriages with opposite sex partners, economic forces will reduce the number of children they have, since reproducing will require surrogate mothers, sperm donors, etc. If gays aren't passing on their genes because they now marry same sex partners, we could see a decline in homosexuality over generations.

I obviously don't know that this will happen. It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, if I may borrow a phrase. I'm just saying that it's not irrational for society to be slow to enthusiastically embrace a change of this magnitude.

But, one prediction I will make is that the future looks good for gay marriage. I just googled some stats. In 1988, the first year there were reliable polls on this issue, opposition to same sex unions was at 75%, and only about 15% were in favor. Today, nationally, the issue is very close to 50/50. North Carolina is part of the Bible Belt, so it's not surprising that it's 40/60 here, unless the surprise is that 40% of the citizens seem ready to say yes to the idea after so few years of the topic being in the public debate.

Assuming that 5% of the population warms to the idea each decade, even NC is only 20 years away from a tipping point. Anything that can be made illegal by a vote can be made legal by a vote. I recognize that, if you are gay, you have good reason to be disgusted and angered by the thought of having to wait another 20 years for legally sanctioned marriages in North Carolina. I would encourage you to turn this anger into a positive energy. Think about all the "vote against" signs you saw in people's yards over the last month. Momentum is building for your goals.

Are there bigots out there standing in your way? Yes. But you don't need to change the opinions of bigots. You need to change the opinions of ten to twenty percent of people who oppose same sex marriage out of simple momentum. You need to appeal to their hearts and minds, make your case that what you want is a positive change not just for you, but for everyone. Advocates have made astonishing progress in only a few decades. Keep moving forward. We've evidence that minds can change. Our greatest weapons in this war are reason and time.

Why Gay Marriage is Good for Straight People

Tomorrow in North Carolina, we go to the polls to vote on an anti-gay marriage amendment that would prevent the state or any business within the state from recognizing same sex marriage or even civil unions. Gay marriage is already illegal by statute. The amendment, say defenders, is to keep activist judges from imposing gay marriage on the state against the will of the people.

I'm going to be voting against the amendment. For me, it's mainly an issue of fundamental fairness. Marriage isn't just about procreation, it's also an important societal creation for helping people deal with finances as well as illness and death. I've personally experienced the turmoil of losing a beloved partner who I wasn't legally married to. Laura became ill with cancer when we were dating, and after that we were so focused on fighting the cancer that we never really stopped to make plans for the future. Her family was wonderful in giving me a say on most of the end of life decisions and the funeral arrangements, but there were still a few issues left dangling due to the fact that we were never legally married. I at least had the option, however unrealistic, of marrying Laura. Imagine being in a similar situation of losing a loved one and being told that the state was going to prevent you from forming a legal union. It just seems needlessly harmful, even spiteful, to withhold this legal sanction from someone simply because you find their partner to be of the wrong sex.

However, I find it unsatisfying to simply appeal to emotion to make a case for a matter of law. It's not that emotion has no role to play in law, but I'd prefer most laws be grounded in reason. So, here are some non-emotional arguments for how allowing gay marriage can benefit straight marriage.

1. As capitalism and evolution teach us, competition is good. Gay couples might have an incentive to build storybook marriages that other people envy. Just as people turn out in former dictatorships to vote at amazing rates, gay people long denied marriage might approach their unions with a special enthusiasm and dedication. This could provide an example for straight couples, who, let's face it, often seem a bit jaded with marriage. Maybe trying to live up to a gay standard could help lower the overall divorce rate of straight couples. This could keep more children in two parent households, which is a major force for fighting poverty.

2. As long as we're talking about economics, as someone who has been wedded in the last 12 months, I can testify that weddings and honeymoons are excellent economic stimulus. If we legalized gay marriage tomorrow, I bet the revenues generated from all the pent up demand for legal marriages could drive economic growth up a point or two. Wedded couples are also likely to go out and buy a house together. They save money together, have health insurance together, and are generally statistically less of a burden on society than single people. Gay marriage, in both the long and short term, would be good for straight people's wallets.

3. It would increase morality. Perhaps you disapprove of homosexuality. If so, do you also disapprove of sex before marriage for straight people? Do you think that sex should be between monogamous couples with the sanction of church and law? If you allow gay marriage, you are helping take a step away from the counter culture, anything-goes sexual morality that took hold in the sixties and seventies and is so ubiquitous today that no one bats an eye if two unmarried opposite sex people live together. Suddenly, you have homosexuals singing the praises of life-long, covenant monogamy. Since homosexuals are frequently drivers of popular cultural trends, marriage could suddenly be the cool, rebellious lifestyle that all young people aspire to. Again, straights win!

So, if you're thinking about voting for the amendment tomorrow, please take a few moments to reconsider. You might be standing in the way of better marriages for everyone.

A good day to buy stock at Home Depot

Cheryl and I have decided it's time to rescue the US economy. We've just helped clear the glut of houses on the market by purchasing a new home. Even better, we purchased a new home with many thousands of dollars of repairs needed. Woo!

Seriously, the list of repairs was daunting. The place needs a new furnace, a new water heater, new floors in three rooms, new doors, new appliances, new gutters, new light fixtures, and a new wood stove. (That last item seems optional, but the living room has a stovepipe in the ceiling and a big brick foundation for a stove taking up space in the floor. It would probably cost more to remove these things and repair the ceiling and floor than just to buy a new stove.) Anyway, today might be a good day to buy stock in Lowe's or Home Depot, as we convert all the money in our savings account into profits for thier shareholders. (Actually, most of the money will probably be going to private small businesses who are providing all the labor, but none of these are listed on the NYSE.)

One might wonder why we've purchased a house in such need of repairs. The house was seriously underpriced for its neighborhood. Even adding the cost of the repairs, we think the house is a bargain. If the house had been priced higher, we still would have made and offer because it's really a terrific home. The lot is big, but not too demanding. It's landscaped with a lot of flowering bushes and trees instead of being mostly lawn. The place is huge in comparison to our present home, but not a stupidly oversized McMansion. It has seven closets and an attic; our current houses has no attic and three small closets, and one of these has the water heater in it. The closet in the master bedroom alone has more storage space than all three of our closets combined.

The location is excellent, right on the edge of town. Take a right from the driveway and it's less than a mile to grocery stores and restaurants, take a left and you're half a mile away from beautiful farmland.

There is, as pictured, a fantastic deck. There's a covered front porch running the length of the house. Inside, three huge skylights fill the living room, kitchen, and dining room with sunlight. The dining room has a giant window overlooking the backyard. If the house has any drawback, it's that the kitchen doesn't have a lot of counterspace. We'll bear this burden as best we can.

Now, we just have to sell our existing house. Spread the word if you know someone in the market who doesn't require a lot of closet space.

Name Calling as Political Debate

I have a story in the latest Intergalactic Medicine Show anthology. If you follow the link, you will find in the customer reviews a one star review titled, "Buy this book to show your support of homophobic bigotry." In the review itself, Card is called vile and hateful, and the review ends with the suggestions that readers might also enjoy "The Adolf Hitler Anthology of Aryan Adventure."

A comment thread then opened beneath this review, where other people call Card and "epic jerk" and "scum," though of course his defenders jump in as well.

Orson Scott Card has become a lightning rod due to articles he's written opposing gay marriage. I've been a fan of Card's political essays for years, and have read most of his arguments against gay marriage. I find that I disagree with nearly all of them.

But, so what? Gay marriage isn't illegal due to Orson Scott Card. It's not even illegal due to George W. Bush or the pope or Clarence Thomas. Homosexual marriage wasn't even a blip on the radar screen of possibilities until about two decades ago. People who oppose gay marriage are standing firmly atop the status quo concept of marriage that has prevailed through most of human history. While I can think of a few cultures where homosexuality wasn't a horrible stigma, I can't think of a single culture where men were openly allowed to marry other men.

I think that there are very good arguments to be made as to why same sex couples should marry. I think society as a whole benefits if we have the legal framework in place to protect homosexual life partners, who work together to purchase property, raise families, and care for one another through sickness, into death. Homosexual couples also seem to have an above average desire to adopt children, and, while I know only a few such couples, those I do know seem to be raising fairly normal children, to the degree that any child can be said to be normal. Finally, the age when gay people would pretend to be straight to protect their families and hide their true identities from thier friends is drawing to a close. The more gay people you discover you're related to, or work with, or friends with, the more you will discover just how ordinary they are, and deserving of a fair shot at the the same happiness straight couples are allowed to pursue.

But, I'm perfectly aware that, in advocating for homosexual marriage, I'm asking the world to accept something new and different. Do I want to redefine marriage? Well, duh, of course. I'm seeking to expand from the long established norm of civilization. Are there risks involved? Quite possibly. One risk is that homosexual couples, so long denied the chance of marriage, will prove exceptionally committed to making their marriages work so as not to give satisfaction to people who say that gay marriage can't work. They could wind up with a divorce rate of, like, 10% while heteros keep rolling along at close to 50%, and embarrass us straight people.

It's a risk I'm willing to take.

So, I'm pro-gay marriage. But, for the life of me, I don't see how calling people bigots, homophobes, and scum advances the same sex cause. Once you start comparing your opponents to Hitler, you've pretty much admitted that you don't understand history, morality, or analogies, and are thus unable to participate in a genuine debate.

The irony is, for all the people pissed off at Orson Scott Card, he's probably done more to advance the concept of homosexual marriage than a million people shouting, "Bigot!" The fact is, in his essays, he spells out his reasoning. He presents his evidence. One might argue that he's dishonest, and searching for a bandaid of logic to slap over his gut-level bias. Who knows? Who cares? The fact is, twenty years ago, nobody was talking about gay marriage. Now, you have prominent conservatives who take the possibility of legally recognized homosexual partnerships seriously, and are thus compelled to take an intellectual stand against it. But, in by the very act of making their arguments, opponents provide a framework that proponents can work with. Anyone who takes the time to write out a long, thoughtful essay on gay marriage is showing a willingness to think about it. Answering their objections, even if you don't change their minds, helps bring clarity to your own arguments, and makes you better prepared to discuss the topic thoughtfully the next time it comes up.

I'll close by saying that, yeah, I know this column singles out people I'll presume to be liberals who are resorting to name calling instead of actual debate. Before anyone brings up Micheal Savage or Rush Limbaugh, yes, yes, yes, I know that the right has plenty of people who engage in name calling. It's a failure across the whole political spectrum, and across a lot of media platforms.

Luckily, I know if you're reading my blog, you're intellectually vibrant enough to avoid such shenanagins. Good job, readers!

The Oil Debate Continues

Since I wrote my essay on why politicians should resist manipulating the price of gasoline, pretty much every op-ed article of the last week has focused on the topic. I'm glad I have such influence on the national debate.

The most amusing claim I've heard this week is that President Obama has intentionally decieved the public as to how much oil the US has, creating a "myth of scarcity." The chart above has often accompanied these arguments.

I am especially amused by the claim that we have 2,303 billion barrels in "undiscovered resources." Wow! Curiously, I woke up this morning and realized I must be a millionaire, since I have 999,999 dollars in undiscovered cash. I plan to alert my banker at once.

I have no doubt, by the way, that we do have a good deal of undiscovered oil, but I'm amused by the specificity of the number provided. It's not just 2,000 billion barrels, or 2,300 billion, it's 2,303 billion.

What the people who make arguments from this chart don't make note of is that, if oil prices fell, most of the oil shown above wouldn't be recovered. We've drilled most of the easy oil that just bubbled up from the ground when we punched a hole, and the oil that remains requires more elaborate technology to extract, and is only viable if the price of oil remains where it's at today.

One irony that environmentalists don't appreciate is that, as the price of oil rises, it will lead to more production, not less. If oil hit 200 dollars a barrel, all of of that "technically recoverable" oil will suddenly be genuine black gold, and will be extracted. Even at the higher prices, demand is only going to keep rising as the rest of the world chases a western standard of living.

So, here's my prediction: If Obama is reelected, gas prices will rise. If the next president is Ron Paul, gas prices will rise. There may be short term down swings, but, in the long run, we should all start planning for much higher prices.

A few random political thoughts

Random opinion #1

Has there ever been a lamer attempt at creating a scandal than the attempt at outrage by some right-wingers over a 1991 video showing a young Obama praising Harvard professor Derrick Bell, even going so far as to hug him? The standard line of argument is that this proves how truly radical Obama is, and is evidence of his secret agenda to tear down America.

The scandal so far appears to be a dud. First, maybe .0001 percent of the US population could have told you who Bell was before this video appeared. From a practical matter, he's just not famous enough to be fuel for scandal. Second, who cares if Bell held the most radical views you can imagine? Suppose he advocated mandatory abortions and 100% taxation. He's a professor. Outrageous philosophical and political beliefs are pretty standard issue among their ilk. The trade off for letting them think whatever the heck they want to think is that everyone else in the world gets to ignore their ideas. But, their students can still like them. I loved arguing with my professors in college, who often had very different ideas about how the world truly worked than I did. How much they genuinely believed thier opinions, and how much they adopted extreme ideas as a way of challenging me to think I can't say. But, if I were to introduce one at a ralley, I'd certainly be generous with praise. My best friend ever identitified himself as a communist. I call myself a libertarian. We agreed on nothing. But I would gladly tell the world he was an intelligent, thoughtful person who should be listened to, and he would have done the same for me. If you only are friends with people who agree with you on everything, you have my sincere pity.

Finally, while I dislike labeling all attacks against Obama as being rooted in racism, I get the icky feeling from this scandal that the right wingers are trying to prove that Obama is a scary black man who hates white people. I've seen the term "racialist" in about half the essays I've read on this subject. Bell apparently argued that the US constitution was an inherently racist document, and thought that the entire system of government would have to be overthrown if blacks were to get a fair shake in this world. I don't agree with this opinion, but its certainly not difficult to understand how a black person born and raised in the era of Jim Crow might have come to such opinions. If such opinions seem frightening to you, you need to get out more often.

Random Opinion #2:

Iran has been in the news a lot. Most of the Republican presidential candidates except Ron Paul have been advocating a willingness to go to war to stop Iran from having nuclear weapons.

I can't understand how anyone who looks at our experience in Iraq or Afghanistan thinks that launching another war is going to be a good option for us. Assuming that our intelligence on Iraq wasn't purposefully fraudulent, we know that a great deal of the things we thought we knew about the facts on the ground in that country turned out to be wrong. The places we thought were manufacting chemical weapons weren't. There were no stock piles of yellow cake uranium. Every claim of a weapon of mass distruction turned out to be false.

I will presume that we weren't trumping up or inventing this intelligence as an excuse to go to war. This just shows how exceptionally difficult it is for us to know what's really going on in a country. I will assume that the Iranians do have a nuclear program, since they openly say they do. But, can we really be certain we know which sites to bomb? How do we know we've got all the sites? If I were an Iranian general wanting to manufacture a bomb, and knew my enemy could look down on my country from space, I would think it would be a no brainer to build dummy facilities that looked menacing but were actually building nothing of significance, while hosting the genuine nuke facilities in the basement of an oil company.

Also, while making a nuclear bomb involves a lot of equipment, the reality is that the big obstacle isn't the equipment, it's the know how. As the engineers perfect each bit of equipment, don't you think the plans are backed up and secured to a ridiculous degree? We could destroy every bit of equipment they have, and a year from now it would all be rebuilt. Bombing wouldn't even destroy the nuclear fuel. It might scatter it and contaminate it, but you don't destroy elements with bombs. With a little clever engineering, most of the fuel could probably be recovered in the aftermath of an airstrike.

So, that leaves us two options. First, we don't rely on airstrikes alone. We invade the country and hunt down every last flash drive that might contain nuclear secrets, and vacuum up every last bit of soil that might contain nuclear fuel. This would be a massive invasion, at least as large as our war with Iraq. But, when we went to war with Iraq, our nation was in much better shape financially. Part of our multi-trillion dollar debt can be blamed on our unfunded wars. Can we really afford to throw on another two or three trillion? At what point would our economy collapse? Second, we rely only on airstrikes, but we don't target only nuclear sites. We cripple Iran's entire infrastructure and keep it down for decades. We bomb every elecrical grid, every water treatment plant, every bridge. Bring Iranian civilization to a halt, so that they can't build even a microwave oven, let alone a nuke. The downside here, aside from the fact that we would be mass murderers of millions of innocent men, women, and children, is that we would again be committing economic suicide. If we destroyed Iranian infrastructure, we would destroy their oil production. As refugees flowed into Iraq right next door, we'd probably send that country back into war, and the flow of oil there would dry up. Overnight, the price of gas could double. I know in my last essay, I said that politicians shouldn't be concerned with trying to control the price of gas, but resisting taking actions that would double the price of gasoline overnight is an area where I might make an exception.

Random Thought #3: Republicans are kind of doomed.

One argument against Obama was that he was inexperienced and had never accomplished anything during his few years in the senate. Sadly, I think that Republicans are now turning this into a requirement for all future nominees. The reality is, if you've been a governor or a senator or held any level of political office higher than Mayor of Wasilla, you've made votes and judgment calls that will outrage the conservative activists that decide the nominations. Before Rick Perry revealed himself as being too inarticulate to lead a Boy Scout troop, he was already losing support because he'd made anti-conservative choices on childhood vaccinations and tuition for illegal immigrants. Rick Santorum is being attacked for voting to raise the debt ceiling and for supporting pork projects in his home state. Romney is attacked because he passed a mandate that all citizens of Massachusetts were required to purchase health insurance--a position at the time regarded a very conservative, but that is now regarded as extremely liberal.

Ronald Reagan couldn't be nominated today. He'd raised taxes when governor, and before he got into politics he was head of a union! Socialist alert!

I understand the roots of Republican mistrust of compromise. But, governors have to make real world choices on how best to educate children, protect the environment, and balance budgets. Senators have to make votes that bring money back home to their states or they don't remain senators. If no elected official is going to be pure enough to earn the support of conservative activists, I hope that in the next round of elections we can just cut to the chase. The people with actual experience can stay home, and the base can nominate a talk show host. It almost happened this time with Herman Caine. Give it another four years.

It's not the government's job to determine the price of gas

My last post ridiculed Newt Gingrich's vision of making the moon the 51st state. Now, I'm going to ridicule him for recently saying that, if he were president, he'd make sure gasoline cost $2.50 a gallon.

But, I'm not really targeting Gingrich here. It's a fairly common charge in politics that expensive gasoline is the fault of the current president. Bush got blamed for high gas prices during his entire administration. He was in the "pockets of the oil companies." Obama is now being blamed, because his administration is "choking the oil industry with regulations."

It bugs me that republican's, who are supposed to be champions of the free market, feel like the federal government should be concerned with the market price of gasoline. It bothers me that democrats, who have been on the record proposing carbon taxes that would increase the price of gasoline, start proposing to tap the strategic oil reserves in hopes of driving prices down.

The reality is, while gas prices can be manipulated in hundreds of different ways in the short term, in the long term prices are determined by the balance of how much it costs to produce weighed against how much we are willing to pay for it.

We aren't unwilling slaves to the oil companies. We pay willingly for their product because we judge the benefits to outweigh the costs. If the costs go up, we do have plenty of tricks up our sleeves to reduce our spending on this or any other product. A coworker of mine has spend years commuting to work in an SUV. Recently, she's swapped this for a compact car. Higher prices can drive us to more fuel efficient vehicles and altered driving habits.

The energy shocks of the seventies produced cars that were radically more fuel efficient on average, and houses that were better insulated. Our appliances today are fine tuned to make the most efficient use of electricity, and the average cost is posted right on the front of each appliance when you buy it. Higher gas prices will produce similar change over time.

We as consumers have power over our purchases. That's the beauty of the free market.

When republicans hear democrats talk about setting prices for, say, health care, they cry "socialism!" If it's true for the cost of a doctor's visit, it's true for the cost of gasoline. Sorry, Newt.

Why the moon won't be the 51st state, and why the stars aren't our destination

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.

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."

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.

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.