We Shall All be Healed

Yesterday, Books for Breasts passed the $1000 mark on funds collected, and I still have about 20 books left to give away!

Back in 2004, the Mountain Goats put out an album titled We Shall All be Healed. I suspect they borrowed the phrase from the prayer, "Heal us, Lord, and we shall be healed." I first listened to the album in Laura's bedroom. She was on chemo at the time, and was spending much of the day in bed. The album is mostly about the self-destructive behavior of drug addicts, but there are some lines within it that filled me with neo-religious visions. In one of the songs, John Darnielle sings, "I dreamt of a factory, where they manufactured what I needed, using shiny new machines." He's talking, in the context of the song, about methamphetamines, but I would find myself dreaming of men and women in white lab coats, toiling over test tubes and microscopes, typing data in to computer terminals. These were the invisible soldiers in the war on cancer, and it filled me with the hope that any day I would pick up a newspaper and find that there had been some breakthrough, and Laura's cancer could be healed. I knew of people who'd lived with cancer for ten years and more. If Laura could hold out ten years, I was certain she would beat the disease.

She didn't, alas, make it ten years. And, if she had, I no longer believe the cure is going to be found tomorrow, or the next day. The last five years of research have yeilded important discoveries, the chief and most important of which is that we still have much more to learn.

But, when America was discovered by Europeans, it took them a while to figure out what they'd found. They set up colonies before they really even understood the shape and scope of the continents they'd encountered. I feel like we are in a similar stage in the understanding of cancer: We are still making maps of its boundaries. We are still sending surveyors into its interiors. We do not yet know all there is to know, but we are daily pushing the frontier ahead of us. And, just as we continued to improve the technology to map America--today, I have the ability to look down on the roof of my house from space!--we are only going to increase our understanding of cancer. Even discovering our ignorance, learning, for example, that a drug wipes out cancer in rats but does nothing for people, is progress. As we seek to understand what doesn't work, we gain insights into what will work.

So, on this warm June Sunday morning, I'll give a little prayer of gratitude to those unknown explorers in their lab coats who are seeking a new, cancer-free world. And, I extend a great big, heart-in-my-throat thank you to everyone who's donated this past week. You've done a good thing. You've put your money where your heart is.

The day is coming. We shall all be healed.

Books for Breasts!

Followers of my blogs, and the readers who read the acknowledgement pages of my books, will know that I lost my partner Laura Herrmann to breast cancer in May 2006. I've been interested in cancer research since then and have privately made contributions to cancer related charities, but I've never put out any sort of appeal on my blogs to solicit for this cause, until now.

Last week, I received several cases of my latest book Dragonseed. One of the ongoing themes of Dragonseed is the idea of healing, both from physical and spiritual wounds. Within the book there's a miraculous object called a dragonseed: Eat the seed, and all your injuries will be healed. Even your oldest scars will vanish.

I have some science fiction hoodoo underlying the dragonseed. The technology to create a pill that will both diagnose and cure any illness is pretty far out in our future, if it exists at all. But, the part of this that isn't science fiction or hoodoo is that I believe that technology has the power to work miracles. We have MRI and PET scans that can look into a human body and see it working in minute detail. We have developed surgical tools and techniques that can remove diseased tissues from a human body without doing undo damage to healthy tissues. My father had a heart attack recently, and the doctors had to place stents in his arteries. The incision to perform the operation was small enough to cover with a band-aid. And, right now, there are researchers who are taking apart cancer cells molecule by molecule to understand the genetic engines that drive them to a degree unimaginable only a few decades ago.

We live in an age of miracles because we live in an age of knowledge. Modern computers are finally powerful enough to process all the complex data contained within a human cell. The only barriers remaining between our present understanding a cure for any disease you can name are time and money.

These are not insignificant barriers. New technologies are always expensive. And, to be blunt, the world has a limited supply of really smart people, and a nearly unlimited supply of problems for them to solve. For better or worse, money is one of the most important driving forces of where the smart people focus their energies. In the sixties, it was decided we would put a man on the moon. We threw money at the problem, and produced a glut of rocket scientists. In the eighties and nineties, computer technology was fed enormous sums of money by the stock market, and smart people focused their energies on designing hardware and software, and with the result that today my cell phone has more memory than I do. There is a lot of money today flowing into health care, but only a fraction of this money goes to research of any given disease. I'd like to invite you to increase the fraction going to breast cancer research, both due to my personal connection to the cause, and because I think that this is the right moment in history to truly make a difference. I firmly believe this is a disease than can be cured within our lifetime. I don't know if one day we will simply swallow a magic pill and be healed, but I do know that the day will come when we will be able to profile any cancer cell and match it with the appropriate drug to wipe it out.

To help bring this day closer, if only by a minute or two, I'd like to announce my "Books for Breasts" promotion. Anyone who contributes to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation through the "Team Dragon" fundraising page will get a free signed copy of Dragonseed.

You can contribute to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer foundation by clicking here. This will take you to my personal fundraising page; just click the button that says "support James." Then, to get your signed copy of Dragonseed, just email me your mailing address to nobodynovelwriter@yahoo.com. I've set aside 50 copies for this cause; if I give them all away by the end of July, I'm pretty sure I can get my hands on another 50.

I've set up a modest goal of raising $300* through this promotion. This means I need to average contributions of $6, which is less than you'd pay for the book on Amazon. However, I'll send you a book for a contribution in any amount, even if it's just a buck. Spend a buck, get a book, save some breasts. Who's with me?

*Okay, I obviously seriously underestimated the generosity of my readers. I hit $300 in under 24 hours. So, I'm going to raise my goal to $1000. Thank you to everyone who's given so far, and everyone who has helped spread the word via blogs and twitter. If I run out of books, I've had some interest from other writers in contributing their books to the cause. I'll keep you posted if it comes to this.

War on Cancer: An Alternative Approach to Health Care

Health care reform is probably the biggest legislative goal of the Obama presidency. I have no doubt that, by the end of the summer, some sort of expensive and complex bill will get signed into law. But, as with the carbon control bill, my hunch is that what emerges will be toothless and nearly pointless. The money just isn't there for a truly radical reform, and the fact is that the majority of the public is reasonably well served by our existing system and doesn't want the boat rocked. Our existing system covers about 80% of the public. I'm sure that a significant chunk of this 80% is unhappy with their coverage. But if 1 in 4 people with private or employer covered health care want some government program to replace it, then you still have 60% of the population satisfied with what they have. If you're a congressman or senator, and you have the choice of pleasing 40% of the population and disrupting the status quo of 60%, you are probably going to stand by the status quo.

However, I think that there are things that our government could do that would be politically popular, save costs in the long run, and actually accomplish some good. Our government is pretty good at selling wars. We have a war on drugs that has filled our prisons to overflowing. We have a war on terror that leads us to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fight wars and inconvenience travellers around the world. Attach the word "war" to a cause, and suddenly budgets are no problem.

So, I think it's time that we have a War on Cancer. We are at a unique moment in human history. Since humans first became aware that they were humans, the functions of the human body have remained mysterious to them. Humans have been humans for at least a hundred thousand years. During this time, we've worked under a lot of very bad theories of how the body worked. The last century, however, saw a genuine revolution in our understanding of the body. This revolution pales in comparison to what we will learn in the next hundred years. In the last year of the last century, we mapped the human genome for the first time. Essentially, we finally opened the pages of the owners manual to the human body, and we haven't even had a decade to process all the information inside. Within the human genome, we will find the causes for entire categories of diseases and once we find the causes, we can craft cures.

Fifty years ago, if we'd declared a War on Cancer, we probably could have thrown a trillion dollars at it and not produced much in the way of results. Today, we have the technology available to process as much information as we can gather. Curing cancer is now mainly a function of gathering information and designing the tools and software to turn this data into something of practical value. Designing these tools is going to be very, very expensive. We do throw a lot of money at cancer research already. According to various numbers I've been able to google, it looks like the federal government spends upward of 10 billion a year on research. 10 billion isn't a trivial number unless you compare it to the figure being discussed as the cost of Obama's health care plan: 1.6 trillion.

A lot of our health care costs today are driven by the need to pay for new equipment and medicines. Machines for CAT scans, MRI, and PET are outstanding tools for detecting cancers at an early stage. They are also crazy expensive, so getting a scan on one of these machines runs into the thousands of dollars. (Also in this cost is the training of people who can run the machine, and the training of people who can read the results.) The same can be said of building a predator drone and arming it with missiles, along with the training of people to fly them. Senators will throw billions toward weapons without blinking an eye. Why not spend similar amounts of money on medical equipment? If the government picked up the cost of all imaging equipment, and insurance companies were no longer shelling out thousands every time one of these scans was performed, it could provide genuine savings that could be passed on to consumers.

I don't want to put forth the idea that I think curing cancer is going to be easy. To start with, there isn't a single disease that constitutes cancer. Cancer is really 200 different diseases, all with their own challenges.

Still, imagine what could be accomplished if the federal goverment spent as much on a War on Cancer as it does on the War on Terror. Cancer is a far more clear and present danger than terrorism to the average citizen. Cancer kills roughly 1500 people a day: every two days, it's a wide-spread, yet somehow invisible 9-11. Imagine if the US spent as much designing and building a new generation of imaging machines as it spends on designing and building the next generation of weapons.

A cure for cancer is waiting out there in our future. If we can accelerate the research so that we've mastered this disease by 2020 instead of 2050, we could enjoy 30 years of cost savings, assuming we could drive the cost of treating some cancers down to the cost of treating, say, a broken leg.

Perhaps this is just science fiction dreaming. Perhaps there is no cure. But, the War on Drugs can't be won, the War on Poverty hasn't been won, and the War on Terror will never be won. A hopeless cause isn't neccessarily a worthless cause. Politicians like getting behind stuff like this. And, unlike some of these wars, the situation isn't hopeless. We are already seeing declines in deaths from cancer, a few fractions a percent each year. Can we change this so that 10 or 20 or 30% fewer people die each year?

At the risk of overusing a phrase: Yes we can.

Why I think the carbon bill is doomed.

Observers of politics this week saw two of Obama's biggest legislative initiatives crash and burn. We'll maybe not burn, but at least they crashed. First, house democrats have proven unable to find any compromise on a bill to regulate carbon emissions. This isn't a shock; if you're a democrat from a state that mines coal or pumps oil, it's going to be political suicide to vote for any sustantive measure that will reduce the consumption of oil or coal. The only way to reduce the consumption of these two commodities is to increase their cost, and increase it a lot. When gas doubled from $2 to $4 a gallon, American's bought less gas. SUVs sat on car lots while the Prius built up a long waiting list. The simplest and most direct path to cutting gasoline consumption would be a gas tax of about $2 a gallon that would push todays cost of gas closer to the $5 mark, with a built in clock for raising rates: every year, the tax increases a dime.

No one who wants to be reelected would vote for this, but it would be a simple way of meeting part of the goal. The mechanism for collecting the tax is already in place, so there's no additional beaurocratic costs. And, this proposal might actually cut the deficit instead of increasing it.

However, gas is only a fraction of the problem with carbon. The big problem (assuming you view carbon as a problem) is coal. My electric bill averages about $80 a month. I'm not sure that most people appreciate how inexspensive that figure is compared to all the benefits I derive from it: Cool air in summer, hot water year round, information at my finger tips 24 hours a day, the freedom to read at night, the ability to pop corn in three minutes flat, and a giant box full of food that stays cold all year round. Electricity is modernity, and in the US, electricity is coal. If you want American's to conserve electricity, you need to raise the cost, and raise it a lot. The challenge that faces most alternative power sources aren't technological, but economic: Coal is simply cheaper than its competitors, and will remain so in the US and China for a long time, since both these countries are sitting on huge deposits of coal.

The direct path to making coal less attractive than its competition is to tax it at a substantial rate. If my electric bill doubled next year, I'd be forced to change some of my habits. For instance, I routinely wash my clothes with warm water. I could save a few bucks a month just by only using cold. I could save even more by using a clothesline to dry some select items of clothing... towels and blue jeans take a lot of energy to dry, for instance. Also, I could turn off my computer the 20 hours a day I'm not using it. When I replace my refrigerator, I'd select one with the lowest energy star rating. LED light bulbs might suddenly seem cost effective.

But, again, the direct path isn't being discussed in congress. Nor should it. I think most American's recognize the economic costs of a direct tax. If you double their gas bill, they will drive to stores less often and spend less money when they get there. Double their electric bills, and they'll again be cutting back in other areas. The effects ripple through the economy as stores and restaurants cut staff. It's economic suicide to double our energy costs directly.

So, the bill that congress has to craft is one that doubles our costs while making the blame fall elsewhere. They want us to come out of this angry at Exxon and Duke Power, not them. But, even if they manage to shift the blame, they can't ignore the political consequences that will fall on them if the recession deepens and unemployment goes even higher. So, I think that the eventual outcome with be that they pass a bill too long for anyone to read that actually does nothing at all. For instance, it's not difficult to pass a law saying that our carbon emissions must be cut in half by 2050, then leave all the paths to that goal vague, toothless, and slated to kick in years from now. I think that when Obama runs again, he'll have a climate bill he can point to as an accomplishment... I just don't think it will actually accomplish anything.

I started by saying that two initiatives crashed and burned this week. The second was health care. I'm going to save my thoughts on this for my next post. Unlike our energy policy, I think there's a smart, politically popular path available to the goal of controlling health care costs. Stay tuned.

A Cure for Cancer

Veronica Gray, Simon Gray, Me, Andy Herrmann, Jessica Herrmann, James Herrman, and the top of Maggie's head (in stroller).

June 13 Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure in Raleigh.

Saturday I took part in the Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure. I did the 5k fun run (though I walked it) with Laura's kids, her brother Andy, and her sister-in-law Jessica.

I've never used my blog to solicit money, except, of course, to encourage people to buy my books. I figure the world is full of good causes, and people will naturally support the things that matter most to them, whether it's Boy Scouts, the local library, NPR, March of Dimes, or whatever. People don't need me to tell them how to be charitable.

On the other hand, I have no problem advocating for other things I feel strongly about. I don't mind making the case for atheism and libertarianism. So, here's my brief pitch for why I think that it's worth sending some of your charitable dollars to organizations actively engaged in the search for a cure for cancer: Unlike certain problems, cancer actually has a solution. Poverty, for instance, has proven time and again to be able to sustain itself as a problem no matter how much money is thrown at it. Similarly, if you give money to Girl Scouts or NPR, more power to you, these are terrific organisations. But, fifty years from now, these organizations are still going to be asking for money. I'm not convinced that will be the case with cancer charities.

Cancer isn't a philosophical problem that can be debated for centuries without ever arriving at a conclusion. It's a defect in the normal function of the cells of the human body. There are specific, identifiable steps that the cells must go through in order for cancer to grow. Fifty years ago, we didn't have the tools we need to track each of these steps. Today, we have instruments available to model the cells in tremendous detail, to the point that we can generate computer models of individual protein strands within the cell. We are in the early stages of a revolution in our understanding of the human body. The information contained in any cell was too complex to fully model only a few years ago. Now, we can carry around terrabytes of data on devices small enough to slip into a pocket. We finally have the tools to truly understand everything that is going on inside a cell.

I don't want anyone to think that I'm underestimating the difficulties that still lie ahead. For one thing, "cancer" isn't one disorder. Even specific types of cancer like breast cancer turn out to be composed of lots of different sub-types, growing in responses to different triggers, following different paths of progression. Cancer isn't a single problem to be solved, but hundreds, if not thousands, of interrelated and overlapping problems.

Still, it is fundamentally a physical problem, and the physical world may be complex, but it's not infinitely complex. Our bodies can be understood, and they can be manipulated. There is a cure out there in our future, and once we cure one type of cancer, the others will follow, and one day we will fear cancer no more than we fear smallpox or polio.

All that stands between us and a cure now is time. There are unknown number of man-hours of study and research between us and a cure. But, the old adage tells us that time is money, and the reverse is also true: Money is time. The more money that's made available for research, the more people will be employed in the research, and the faster those man-hours will accumulate.

So, if you are someone who likes putting your charitable dollars toward problems that have solutions, consider making a contribution to a program searching for a cure for cancer.

I believe in matter

A few months after Laura died of cancer, I went the Bodyworks exhibit, where corpses were preserved with plastic. Peeled and posed, they show the inner workings of the body, the muscles, bones and nerves. I spent a long time studying a lung riddled with cancer. I could see the tiny knots of tissue that had ended Laura’s life. Looking at the tumors I felt peace, and optimism. Laura’s death hadn’t been the act of a capricious god, nor some failure of spirit or karma. The tumors that killed her were physical, not some concept or idea. They were growths of tissue and nothing more. They were matter.

And matter is wonderful.

The beauty of matter is that it can be understood. It obeys rules. The secrets of matter unfold daily before the collective study of mankind.

I believe our most urgent problems have their solutions in the material world. Our understanding of steel and oil gave us the internal combustion engines that power our comfortable modern lives. Our study of plants and soil have led to bountiful harvests undreamed of by earlier generations. We live longer lives due to our understanding of diseases, and our ability to better engineer the delivery of clean water and dispose of our waste.

It’s true that every advance brings new challenges. Longer life spans lead to a growing population that strains our resources. Increasing crop production has come at the expense of natural habitats, and fertilizers and pesticides can poison our streams and fields. But we know of these problems because of our continued study of the physical world. We’ll solve these problems by deepening our understanding. We’re building new materials from the atom up to capture the energy of the sun. The age when power comes to our homes via copper wires, or to our cars as flammable liquids, is near an end. In our lifetimes, our roofs will become power plants and a new generation of batteries will propel us along the highway. Our growing knowledge of genetics will give us crops that feed more people with less harm to the environment.

And, yes, I believe that one day the tumors that killed Laura will no longer threaten anyone. Cancer is caused by a few stray genetic switches that get flipped and turn ordinary cells into voracious growth machines. One day, we’ll design the key to turn these switches off.

All of these problems are complex, but none are infinitely complex. Our understanding of matter has given us the power to process unimaginable amounts of information in the etchings on a silicon wafer or the magnetic alignment of atoms on a steel disk. As we learn about matter, we can build increasingly powerful tools to study and manipulate it. We are nowhere near the final boundaries of our understanding.

I'm James Maxey, and I believe in matter.

___

Note: I've written this post with the goal of submitting it as a "This I Believe" essay on NPR. These are limited to 500 words, though the real limit is actually a time one, I think. I'm pretty sure the essay can't be more than three minutes long when read aloud. I feel like there's a lot of stuff I'm not saying in this essay, many points I'd like to expand on. But, I'm putting it up here to see if anyone has any comments on its relative effectiveness or clarity. If there's anything that confuses you, or any obvious typos you note, I'd love to hear about it. My goal is to submit this to NPR next week.

Thanks!

The Comic Book Writing Paradox

I read comic books faithfully for over thirty years. I got hooked on them as a kid, collected them as a teen, and accumulated them weekly as an adult, spending a sizable portion of my monthly income on the continuing adventures of my favorite characters. But, I quite cold turkey a few years back. I realized I was part of the problem with comics--I was buying them out of sheer momentum rather than out of actual entertainment. DC and Marvel had tried to grow up with me, selling me comics when I was 10, 20, 30, 40... but the comics they were selling 40 year old me were of no interest at all to kids I knew.

Wores, I wouldn't want to show many of the storylines to kids if they were interested. Identity Crisis was great, but do I really want a child to read about Dr. Light raping Enlongated Man's wife? Or Green Arrow stabbing Deathstroke in the eye?

There's an interesting paradox in modern comics: On average, they are better written and better drawn than they were when I was a kid. At the same time, they just aren't as fun as they once were. Maybe it's just me... perhaps my "sense o' wonder" meter got broken when I turned 40. On the other hand, lately I have gone back and read some of the comics from the seventies, and I do spot some things that I think made comics better back then.

1: You got a LOT more story out of each issue. Comic books these days are very cinematic. A character can spend five pages just putting on his costume. You spend a few more pages of him dealing with friends and family, adding depth to the character. Before you know it you're down to only a page or two where the hero and villians can smack each other around, assuming you get there at all. In the seventies, things moved. Somebody was crashing through a wall by at least the third page. The Justice League could split up in a single issue and travel to the age of dinosaurs, Saturn, the 35th century, the Rock of Eternity, Smallville, and Atlantis and still wrap up all the plot lines by page 17. Seriously, the pacing is just headspinning. Most books today just move too slow.

2: You actually had new characters and villians showing up. Today, it seems like the majority of "new" heroes are actually reboots of old heroes. One surprise when you read Superman from the seventies is that Lex Luthor doesn't show up every issue. There are a lot of one shot villians. Batman can actually go a whole year without fighting the Joker. The storylines today overuse the same core characters. The characters are more trapped in their never-ending battles today than they were back then, even though comics were just as dedicated to returning to the status quo.

3: I know that this is going to sound dumb, but better writing has created worse comic books. I consider myself a pretty good writer, and feel like I have fairly high expectations of the novels I read and the movies I watch. I like depth of characters, I like thought-provoking plots, I like events that forever change characters and force them to contront hard moral choices. I think you can find these same elements in most modern comics. Today, if you get a writer on a comic book who is also a novelist (say, Orson Scott Card on Iron Man) he's going to bring to that comic book the writing aesthetics he's learned from novels. He'll spend a lot of time establishing motives for all the characters. He'll build a plot slowly and plausibly, nailing down every element and action so that it feels real. The science will be well researched and have at least some nod toward actual facts. Over the course of six issues or so, the novelist turned comic-book author will manage to tell a story that will present you with a smart, solid tale that will make you think.

When the story is collected as a graphic novel, it's a good tale. Unfortunately, when it's appearing in monthly installments, seventeen pages at a time, any given issuie is actually sort of... boring. (I'm not picking on Card here, by the way. I've seen this with almost all novelists turned comic book writers.) You pay four bucks to pick up a comic book, but you don't get a story for your four bucks, you get a fragment of a story, and it's just not that satisfying.

In the seventies, the depth of motivations for a supervillian was usually along the lines of, "Well, I've got this freeze-ray, and my mama sewed me this costume... why shouldn't I rob a bank today? What are the odds of the Flash showing up AGAIN?" And when the Flash would show up, he'd trap the villian inside a giant birdcage that just happened to be nearby at the giant birdcage museum, because, you know, you find these things in big cities. The moral dilema of the issue would be whether or not he should sign autographs for the cops afterwards or rush off to keep his date with Iris. It writing wasn't deep, and it wasn't sophisticated, the science made you roll your eyes, but, somehow, it also wasn't boring.

In the seventies, comic books were written by people who understood they were writing comic books. They had a set number of pages to fill, month after month after month, and each month had to cram in a story. To meet their deadlines, they would throw in the wierdest crap you can imagine, and explain it with the flimsiest of logic. You wound up with 17 pages of strange wonder. Today, comic books are being written by people who write excellent novels, televisions, and movies... but who don't know squat about comic books, where a single issue is the most important unit of story. Today, any given issue of a comic is just a fragment of a larger graphic novel. Who wants to spend 4 bucks on a chapter when you can wait and buy the whole story line for half the price of buying it chapter by chapter?

If novelists want to write about superheroes, they should... in novels. In the mean time, the industry should go and find a bunch of hacks who turn out stories quick and dirty, in hope of recapturing the lost formula that made comics great.

Or, perhaps looking to the past is the wrong approach, and it's time to fully embrace evolution. Blasphemy of blashemies, maybe it's time for the comic book to disappear. Instead of publishing monthly issues of Batman and Spiderman, the publishers can release two or three graphic novels per year. I think you'd wind up with even better graphic novels as a result, because you'd finally be acknowledging that this is the artform that is actually being published.

Ten Reasons to Believe in God, part 8, 9, and 10

A few months ago, I launched my "Ten Reasons to Believe in God, or Why I am an Atheist" series. I think at this point, I've tackled six of the reasons. Below is the original list, hyperlinked to relevant posts:

1. Argument from design (life is just too complex to have arisen randomly... AKA the watch in the beach argument).
   
2. Documentary evidence (various holy texts) Note: This links to the same post, but my argument against the documentary evidence is in the comment section in two long posts down near the end. I'll consolodate all this into an actual essay eventually. Right now, I'd rather tackle fresh topics than rehash stuff I've already covered.)
   
3. Eyewitness testimony (plenty of people have talked to God directly) Note: Again, this is an argument I made in the comments section of the linked post.
   
4. The Super Alien hypothesis (All the attributes of God can be plausibly imagined and explained by SF authors so... why not?)
   
5. The God Shaped Hole (Something in the human psyche needs God. Why would this be if there was nothing there to fill that need?) I haven 't tackled this one in a coherent fashion yet. Stay tuned.
   
6. The Master Plan (Life is too full of meaningful coincidence not to think there isn't a guiding intelligence behind it.)
   
7. The Unthinkable Alternative (We must believe in God because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. Take God away and we'll all be cannibals inside of fifteen minutes.)
   
8. Pascal's wager (You have more to gain by believing in God than you do by believing in no-God.) See below.
   
9. Respect for tradition (My father, my grandfather, my greatgrandfather, etc. all believed in God and it worked out great for them. Why disrespect a winning formula?) See below.
   
10. Just because. Nyah! (When all else fails, you can't argue with faith.) See below.
    

The last three arguments are, to my mind, the closest things to strawmen I included on my list. But, what can I say? I was struggling to fill out my list due to some strange cultural need to put every concievable topic into lists of ten. And, these are actual arguments I've encountered over the years; it's not like I'm just making them up to shoot them down.

Pascal's Wager: This is an agument made by the philosopher Pascal that, even though the existence of God can't be proven, you should live as if it's true, because you have everything to gain if it is true, and nothing to lose if it's false. If you believe in God and there is a God, presumably you go to heaven. If you believe in God and there is no God, you die and that's it. If you don't believe and there is a God, you go to hell. If you don't believe and there is no God, you die and that's it. Only the first of the four possible outcomes has a good conclusion, so you'd be an idiot not to shoot for it.

Plenty of people have tackled this argument, so forgive me if this is mostly a rehash of stuff you've heard before. The first argument is: Which God? You can't simultaniously believe in the God of Islam, the God of Christianity, the Hindu dieties, the Great Spirit, and Xemu. Pascal made his argument immersed in a culture of Christianity. Today, we know that the proposed choices are many: Choosing one faith may lead to your damnation in another faith. The argument fails because God isn't a single definable quality.

The second argument can boil down to: "If God is real, he's not an idiot." If you don't really believe, but act as if you do because you think it might lead to a reward, presumably, He'll know. Acting as if you believe when you don't really believe is just hypocricy, and Jesus specifically had no time to waste on hypocrits. Maybe Marduk is more forgiving.

So, we move on to the next argument: Respect for tradition. I honestly feel that this is the dominant reason for belief in God. Your parents believe in God. They take you to church where you are taught about God. Your extended family shares the same beliefs, and the friends you make in church form the foundation of your social circle. There's a very strong need for people to be part of their group. Many faiths have traditions of shunning members who wander. The consequences of formally leaving a faith can be devastating. An atheist who was formerly Mormon or Jehovah's witness might find themselves given the cold shoulder at family reunions... a fundamentalist Muslim might find himself beheaded at a family reunion. Peer pressure doesn't stop in high school.

Of course, this isn't just the negative argument: Stray and you will be punished. There's also the positive argument: You respect your parents and grandparents, and they made a pretty good life as devout Baptists, or Catholics, or Wiccans. You witness your father going out and doing something charitable--taking Christmas hams to the poor, maybe--and he tells you that he's doing it because the Bible says it's a good thing to care for those less fortunate. You've seen good people who credit their goodness to faith in God, and you want to be a good person. The virtues of your role models leads you to emulate their faith.

This is a tough argument to refute because it's not so much an argument as it is an ingrained human cultural behavior. Christian parents give birth to babies who are most likely to grow up as Christians. Buddhists give birth to future Buddhists. So it has been and so it shall be. If religion were really something people spent a lot of time thinking about, it seems like we'd see a lot more mixing of faiths within nations and families. And, to America's credit, we do see a lot of mixing. We are simply exposed to more faiths than our forefathers were. And, the more faiths you encounter, the harder it is to feel like your ancestors had a lock on the Holy Truth. Sure, you saw your parents delivering Christmas hams and learned that Christians are charitable. But, later, you go and help build a house with Habitat for Humanity and you find you're working beside a tattooed lesbian Buddhist who drives nails in a single strike and seems to really be happy with her place in the universe.

The most effective argument against "Respect for Tradition" is that a person paying any attention at all to the world will quickly come to realize there are hundreds of different traditions that are worthy of respect. Are all these charitable acts drawn from all these different traditions? Or is there something more fundamental at work? If you strip away all religion, would you find that humans would still be charitable? Might the good behaviors of humans be attributed to their humanity, rather than to divinity?

Which brings us, at last, to number 10: You can't argue with faith. Nyah! Long time readers of my blog know about my relationship with Laura Herrmann, who died of breast cancer three years ago. Laura believed in God. She wasn't a Christian, she didn't pray, but she felt, deep down, that there was some force in the world that gave meaning to everything. There was no name for her god, other than God. There was no religion. She just believed in a "guiding force." Someone was watching the light at the end of the tunnel.

Once she got sick, I certainly wasn't going to argue with her faith. She took comfort from it; it was a source of strength. But, early on the relationship, I'd talk a lot about my beliefs and would ask her to expand on her beliefs, and her whole argument was, essentially, "It's just what I feel." It is, perhaps, the ultimate argument ender. You can't really tell people that they aren't feeling what they are feeling, or that a feeling they may have is right or wrong. You can of course argue that people have their facts wrong, but Laura's argument was free of all facts. It was pure feeling. It was her hunch, and she was sticking with it.

I've argued in a previous post that my atheism is mostly an act of faith. You can intellectually refute all the factual claims made by various religions, but you can't actually prove the non-existance of an amorphous, undefinable God. So, to make that last leap from agnosticism to atheism is, for me, a leap of faith.

Before it sounds as if I'm in full retreat in the face of argument 10, let me make a counterargument. It may be fruitless and unrewarding to argue with the faith of others, but I personally find it to be highly rewarding to argue with my own faith. It may look to the casual reader like I've compiled this list of arguments for believing in God only to shoot them down and make myself feel more smug in my atheistic triumph. The truth is much more complex: I actually go out of my way to discover new arguments for God and against atheism because I enjoy testing what I feel. Laura may have been satisfied simply believing, but I like putting my brain into gear and grinding away at questions that may, ultimately, have no answers. I actually am excited by the possibility that I may discover that some of my fundamental assumptions are wrong.

By constantly questioning and challenging my own assumptions, I think I gain a few things. First, I believe I learn empathy by trying on the thoughts of others. I may not believe their arguments for believing in God, but I can see where they're coming from. I don't walk around assuming that the faithful are all deluded fools blind to the truth; I assume they have reasons for believing what they believe. Second, I find that spending hours thinking about this stuff is good for my creative life. My novel Dragonseed (coming soon!) is driven thematically by how much faith people should have in their leaders, and what paths one can follow to discern what is true. (Plotwise, it's driven by dragons biting people and people stabbing dragons. Also, dragons biting dragons and people stabbing people. In other bits, dragons stab dragons and people bite people. It's a work with many, many facets.) Anyone could make up a fictional world and fill it with heroes and monsters. What makes my novels interesting (I hope) are the thousand sleepless nights I've spent tossing and turning as I contemplate God and the Absense of God.

So, yes, you can argue, "this is just what I believe, so shut up," and I'll leave you alone. But I'm here to testify that beliefs you can examine and argue possess their own rewards.

At least, that's what I feel.

Nyah.

Is America a Christian Nation?

Barack Obama is on the record as saying, "Whatever we once were, we're no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers." In response to this, a group of 41 congressmen have introduced House Resolution 397, a bill that basically says, "We are too a Christian nation, so there!" In the body of the bill are a long list of arguments explaining why and how our founding fathers specifically established America as "Christland," and it was only a clerical error that resulted in the name "America" getting into the official record. Or, whatever.

This is just the latest response to the increasingly popular notion that Christianity is under attack by the government, despite all evidence to the contrary. I am unaware of a single church in America that was surrounded by armed policemen this morning preventing people from going inside. Christians enjoy the same rights that I do to print their own newspapers and books, to rent billboards and advertise their spiritual products, and even to go door to door and spread the good news. The few restrictions that are in place are restrictions placed on the government, not the citizens. The principal of a school, as a representative of the government, cannot go on the intercom each morning and read the Bible to all the students in the school. But, that same principal, as a private citizen, is free to read the bible out loud to anyone in earshot when he's not serving in his official capacity. The man can be Christian, but the office can't.

This seems like splitting hairs to a lot of Christians. But, the "America is a Christian nation" crowd seems, to me, to be a little unclear on what, exactly, the central tenents of Christianity are. From a theological standpoint, can a government even be Christian? Does a government have a soul that can stand before the Lord on Judgment Day? Does a nation? Or does it all come down to individuals? It seems to me that the concept of group salvation is specifically dismissed in the scriptures. The notion that a nation can be Christian is as spiritually meaningless as the idea that a cat can be Christian.

The central dogma of Christianity is summed up in good ol' John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but shall have everlasting life." The contract between God and man in the New Testament isn't a group contract. In the old testament, the pact was between God and a collective nation or race. But in the New Testament, being a Christian is a contract between God and a specific individual. Your salvation doesn't depend on the actions of your neighbors. If you live in the heart of, say, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and your neighbor to the left is a lesbian wiccan who dances around naked in the pentagram in her backyard during full moons, and your neighbor to the right is a full-blown radical communist atheist with a hammer and sickle tattoo on his bicept, and the family across the street has just moved in from some country you can't pronounce, and you aren't sure exactly what their religion is, but it seems to involve doing horrible things to chickens... it doesn't matter to God. When the rapture comes, God isn't going to pass you by because he doesn't approve of your neighbors. All he cares about is whether you're a "whosoever."

I suspect I would get much less frustrated with the more vocal proponents of Christianity on the right if they would show some glimmer of understanding of their own religion. It matters not one whit to Jesus if America is a Christian nation. Nations aren't the functional spiritual unit that he cares about. They are doing nothing to advance the work of Jesus by introducing these bills. If these congressmen really want to spread the gospel, I'd like to suggest they've chosen the wrong profession. They might be more effective evangelists as preachers or missionaries. Their attempts to legislate Christianity into the hearts of their fellow citizens is just sad. If someone can give me even one good reason why they should be wasting a dime of their tax-paid salaries worrying about this, I'd love to hear it.

Road Trip!

Stairs at Hatteras Lighthouse. There are 240 of 'em.
Lake Mattamuskeet, a big honkin' lake

Egrets, we saw a few, but then again, too few to mention....
(all photos are by Cheryl Morgan)

I took a three day weekend and hopped into my friend Cheryl's space-age Toyota Hybrid and together we went out to see the watery parts of the world, or at least the sort-of damp parts of North Carolina. While exploring Google maps, I couldn't help but notice that there's a great big chunk of land on the inner banks that has no towns of any size. Once you leave Washington, NC and head east on 264, you cross about 90 miles of highway with no Walmarts, McDonald's, or even a chain grocery store. Also, no traffic. There was a stretch of highway between Englehard and Stumpy point where we didn't pass a single car going the other way. Nor were there any driveways, mobile homes, or any other signs of civilization save for the highway itself. We passed a town sign for "Leechville." There were no houses anywhere to be seen. I assume the place had plenty of leeches, because it fell somewhat short on the ville. It is good for the soul to spend time in such emptiness.

The highlight of the 264 journey has to be Lake Mattamuskeet. This is the largest natural lake in North Carolina, almost 18 miles long. There are places where you can stand and not see the far shore. (In the photo above, the trees you see are an island... beyond the island, it was water as far as you could see.) Almost every other significant body of water in North Carolina is cluttered by development, but Mattamuskeet is mostly untouched. The southern shore is a federal wildlife sanctuary. The north is presumably open for development, but there's nothing there. No hotels, no restaurants, just miles and miles of open space. We did see one boat ramp, but never saw a boat on the water. One reason the lake is probably undeveloped is that it's shallow--the average depth is 2 feet. I imagine this limits the use of larger boats. I also can't help but think that mosquitoes probably rule the land later in the year, though we weren't bothered on our trip. The wildlife on the wildlife reserve were ridiculously helpful in showing themselves. We saw deer, otters, egrets, herons, snakes, and turtles, lots and lots of turtles. Also, we saw the tracks on the shore that just had to come from a bear. I definitely want to return with binoculars and a better camera. Also, a fishing pole.

For more pictures of wildlife, check out Cheryl's flickr from the trip.

Manteo lies at the far end of 264. It's the start of the "touristy" area, a gateway to the Outer Banks. But, Manteo was still nice. One thing we really appreciated was the work they had put into their public spaces. The waterfront is all one long boardwalk with plenty of places to sit great views. It was very inviting and open. You felt like they really wanted people to enjoy the town.

The following day, we drove down Highway 12, from Nags Head to Hatteras. This is not empty space, devoid of humans. But... it's not without its charm. And, the Hatteras lighthouse is again open to visitors. We climbed to the top. It was something of a workout, but totally worth it for the view.

Afterwards, we took the ferry over to Ocracoke. Ocracoke was lovely--very empty on the northern parts of the island. And, the town itself is quite charming. However, the public space is the exact opposite of Manteo. Every square inch of the waterfront is private property. It's really tough to find a space to stand to watch the sunset. All the people we met were really friendly, but all the "no trespassing" and "keep out" signs gave the town a slightly hostile vibe. The highlight of the island was the star gazing. We drove back up to middle of the island. There were no man made lights for miles. The night was a little hazy, but even with the humidity the stars popped out with spectacular clarity, nearly free of light pollution. We had a guide to constellations and were pleased to spot a half dozen or so. Normally, when I look up at the night sky here in Hillsborough, I'm lucky to even see the Big Dipper.

Monday, we left Ocracoke on the ferry to Cedar Island. It's a two hour boat ride. For about an hour of the ride, you can't see land in any direction. It rained, alas, and the wind was fierce, so we spend most of the ride in the car. Cedar Island had a beach that was one of the uglier beaches I've ever seen. Lots of trash, and dead jellyfish everywhere. But, the drive out of town through the wildlife preserve is gorgeous, just miles and miles of marsh.

When we finally reached Beaufort, it felt strange to see fast food restaurants and grocery stores again. Beaufort isn't a big city, but it felt like a metropolis after three days spent on 264 and Highway 12. A few hours later we were back on I-40, and the star-starved skies of Raleigh-Durham. But, it's nice to know that the wilderness, and the stars, are still out there.

Shadows on the Screen: Laura Herrmann, Three Years Later

I went to Laura's grave to leave some flowers. It turned out that the earth was already quite generous in this regard... the whole section of the cemetery where she was buried was white with clover. With the rain we've been having lately, it seems as if clover sprouts and blooms in the wake of a lawnmower. The persistence of the tiny flowers is aggravating if you desire a crisp looking lawn. But, with a flip of a mental switch, you can see the flowers as flowers once again, and wonder why anyone in their right mind would ever wish to mow them.

The clover triggered a memory of driving around with Laura in the country a few weekends before she died, specifically to look at fields blooming with clover, wild sage, and other tiny flowers that in aggregate paint the spring landscape. And of course, one memory can trigger a cascade: I wound up thinking about our trips to the beach, and about scouring the shoreline for fragments of beach glass, which she collected with the goal of decorating, well, something. Maybe a table one day. She did cover one light switch plate in her bathroom with beach glass.

Foolishly, I once spotted beach glass for sale in one of the gift shops at the beach, and suggested she could reach her goal of a table-sized quantity much quicker just buy buying a bag or two. She looked at me as if I were an idiot. The stuff for sale at the shop wasn't "real" beach glass. It had been manufactured in a rock tumbler. It was actually much nicer and smoother than the stuff we'd find on the shore, some of which would still have a sharp edge or two. But it wasn't real. It wasn't of any use to her.

In hindsight, it's plain to me now that our hours spent walking along the beach, heads down, eyes searching for any hint of green or blue (the most cherished forms of beach glass, with brown and white the most common), weren't about gathering the glass. They were about gathering memories.

It's so easy to pass through life in too big of a hurry to stop and build any memories. Last summer, I spent nearly all my free time hunched over a computer banging out books. With the exception of a few moments, most of last summer just blurs into one long haze of typing. This year, I'm not going to be such a slave to the keyboard. I want to go out and see the world, and look at some flowers. I want to go hiking and fishing; I want to just get in my car and go places I've never gone. The one thing I definitely don't want to do is spend my summer sitting around watching television, or surfing the internet. Nothing is worse than a skull full of memories of all the TV shows you've watched. It's like bringing home bags of beach glass from a shop. Sure, you've got recollections of exciting adventures, clever things people said, and breathtaking scenery... but they've all been manufactured for you. A real memory isn't going to be quite as clean. You're going to remember that when you walked on the beach, you got sunburned. When you went hiking, you inhaled a pound of gnats. You went fishing and caught some nice fish, but you also buried a hook under your fingernail when you were reaching into the tackle box.

And you'll cherish these experiences all the more.

Real memories, like real beach glass, should have a few sharp edges.

A few random thoughts on politics

Driving home tonight, I was listening to news about Arlen Specter switching to the Democrats. I'm not happy about it, not because I particularly like any Republican policy, but because I did like that there was at least still some small sliver of a balance of power.

On the other hand, in a way that has never really happened in my lifetime, it's interesting that one party really owns all the responsibility for managing the country's problems at the moment. Since Republican's can't pull off a filibuster even with 100% solidarity, and since the Democrats have a firm majority in the house, there really is no excuse at all for the Democrats not to fulfill their collective promises. Claims of republican obstruction are going to ring hollow. On a wide range of topics, from climate change, to fuel supplies, to foreign policy, to health care, the Democrats will be left with two choices: Act, or try to blame Bush.

I suspect we'll see the later strategy. I don't think Democrats are truly eager to enact rigid carbon caps; they have to know that this would strangle the economy at the worst possible time. I predict, instead, that they will hem and haw and commission on it, then enact some legislation that goes into effect in 2016, after Obama's out of office. When pressed why they aren't acting more aggressively now that they hold all the reins of power, they'll say that their hands are tied by the economic stagnation that Bush created. Any foreign policy that doesn't go their way: Bush poisoned the waters.

And, I think this will have some traction for a year or two, but, long term, the democrats are going to really have to figure out how they are going to placate their most rabid members. Bush's blood will only sustain them so long. Eventually, all the interesting fights will be democrat versus democrat.

Here's an idea I had that may be the Republican's last hope of wielding any power: Every last member of the house and senate should switch their party affiliation to Democrat. Just have the republican party fold up shop, and flood the ranks of the Dems with conservatives, who will then have a real shot at building political coalitions with moderates. Remove the power of party labels by putting everyone under one umbrella, and shift the debate from what defines a party to what defines the individual members.

I know it won't happen, but it's still an interesting thought. I suspect the republicans will just hold on, hoping for the day that the democrats stumble badly enough to bring them back to power, which certainly will happen one day. After all, I don't think the Democrats owe their present popularity and power to Barack Obama--I think the real savior of the democratic party was George Bush.

The Art Grid

John Brown, a fellow writer, posted a grid on his blog this weekend designed by another writer, Lon Prater, that shows a four quadrant analysis of the various categories of writers as they fall along an axis of love and money. It's funny, but also pretty thought provoking, and it strikes me as being appropriate to more than just writing. You can check it out here.

The only law of literature

The discussion in the thread of my last post came on the heels of my discussing writing on a thread at a forum called ImpishIdea. A writer there named Lccorp2 is posting a series of articles "sporking" Bitterwood for it's crimes against literature. Normally, bad reviews elicit shrugs from me. I've been around long enough to know that what I write isn't going to be to everyone's tastes. And, I sometimes gain really valuable insights from bad reviews. Suanne Warr's comments on excessive use of minor POV characters resonated with me in her review, and led me to try new strategies in later books for building scenes where I don't want to be in the head of the character who the scene is really about. I don't eliminate all minor POV scenes, since they are still useful tools, but I now save them for when they are the best of all possible tools, not just the most convenient one. (An example in Dragonforge is the one scene that is in the POV of Sparrow as she fights her way down the corridor of assassins to open the gate to the Nest. It's her only POV scene, it's probably under a 1000 words long, but there really was no better alternative than to jump into her head at that point, and the resulting scene is one I'm happy with.)

But, something about Lccorp2's criticism of the book struck me as strange. He's breaking the book down chapter by chapter; he dislikes it from the very first page, and by chapter 3 he hasn't found a single element of the book he likes. The book has failed on every single level for him. Yet, he kept reading the book to the end. It mystified me. There have been plenty of books that I've picked up over the years that weren't to my taste. Plenty more books I've never even picked up because I could glance at the cover and know instantly that I wasn't the target audience of the book. The Left Behind series, for instance. So, I put the question out there of why he'd kept reading the book.

It turns out that this website is in the habit of analyzing "bad" books in order to learn what makes them bad, with the intention that it will lead the readers at the sight, mostly novice writers, to discover how to improve their writing. In addition to sporking Bitterwood, they apparently have also sporked Twilight and Eragon, books that they hated for reasons they documented in great detail.

I'm actually somewhat flattered to be in the company of Twilight and Eragon. If my books could fail to please readers even one tenth as spectacularly as these books failed to please readers, I could retire a wealthy man. It struck me as a rather perverse and backward approach to learning to write--to take books that earned the approval of editors, publishers, movie producers, and millions of readers... then figure out how not to write like that.

In reality, it's a very simple thing not to write in a way that you don't like.

Just don't write stuff you don't enjoy reading.

I've never read Twilight. Would probably chew off my arm if I were chained to a seat in a theatre where the movie was playing. But, I'm not a 14 year old girl. I understand my own tastes and preferences. I'm free, among the millions of books in this world, to seek out and read books that I enjoy. If I know from the cover, or the pitch, or the first chapter, that the book isn't for me, I move on. Life is too short to waste time reading stuff you hate.

And, if you do hate it, there's no point in reading it in order to try to figure out the secrets of its success. You'll never grasp it. If you are searching for some magic formula of plot or character or dialogue that a successful writer has captured and try to mimic it, you are likely to fail.

The reason that my Twilight or Eragon or even my books manage to make it into print boils down, I think, to a couple of key elements. First, we actually managed to write a book; this is a pretty big obstacle for some folks. Second, we all got lucky and our manuscripts wound up in the hands of the right people at the right time. But, third and most importantly, I think Twilight and Eragon and Harry Potter and my books were written as labors of love. When these books were first emerging into the world, no one was paying the writer to write them. They were written instead because they were a story that the writer loved.

All the literary analysis of writing techniques, of style, of world building, of creating characters--it all has it's place, but it's almost completely useless as a guide to writing a good book. You are never going to be able to think or study or analyze your way into writing a book that people love.

There is only one law of good literature: Write what you'd love to read.

Not what you have read and loved. What you love, but haven't yet read.

To quote myself from the Impish Idea thread:

Every thing you write should be a love story. Not a romance. But a story written because you loved it.

Follow your passion. Don’t worry about pleasing everyone. Fill your book with the stuff that makes your heart race and leave out the stuff that bores you. If you don’t make it into print, at least you’ll have a book you can look at with pride as being truly your own.

Once you've learned this secret, everything else falls into place.

Squidoo: The Dragon Age

I was contacted over the weekend by a fellow named Mike Moore who has created a Squidoo "lens" on my Dragon Age novels. I confess, I had never heard of Squidoo before. Apparently, it's a site where users can create articles around very specific and focused topics, called "lenses." It differs from wikipedia, I think, in being less rigid and encyclopedic in its approach.

Anyway, here's the link to Squidoo: The Dragon Age. Mike just posted an interview with my earlier today where I discuss my favorite characters from all three books, as well as give some insights as to my creative process, and reveal why the third book of the series may or may not bring peace to the middle east.

Socialism versus Capitalism

There was a poll released today showing that only 53% of American's believe capitalism to be a superior economic system. 20% preferred socialism, and the rest weren't sure.

As expected, right wing talk show hosts were having a field day with this. It's the downfall of America; we're half way to communism.

I think a little perspective is needed.

First, while I suppose that economists may use the terms capitalism and socialism with a clear understanding of what they mean, I think that most people are somewhat fuzzy on the concepts. Polling Americans about economics is a somewhat ill-fated activity. Americans use credit cards to buy pizzas and go to the movies. Any nation where large percentages of the population will go into debt to entertain themselves is a nation that collectively knows nothing about managing its money.

Second, the reality is that it's possible for a nation to be both capitalistic and socialistic at the same time. These aren't like matter and antimatter, destroying one another on contact. It's more like a sliding scale with pure libertarian capitalism at one end and outright communism at the other. America's needle has been sitting in the middle of these extremes for a long time. Business has never had a truly free hand in America, nor should it. Also, I think a lot of businesses would go into a full blown panic if the government really decided to get out of their affairs. If the US decided tomorrow that our agricultural policy was: grow whatever you want, sell it where ever you can, at whatever price you can get, you would see shares plummet in every stock even vaguely tied to food.

Finally, I find in the worship of capitalism flaws similar to the worship of libertarianism. (Keep in mind, I am a libertarian.) Both systems are built around a fundamental idealogy that says that if government would get out of the way, people would behave rationally to further their own self interests. They would make better investments, use better judgment when purchasing products, and generally be able to police themselves. The flaw, of course, is that substantial pluralities of people don't behave rationally, even when there are strong incentives to do so. For instance, for pretty much all my adult life, people have been able to invest money in IRAs. It saves in taxes, it's safe, and there are banks in every town in America that will be glad to set one up for you. Yet, only about 14% of people choose to contribute to a traditional IRA. For the record, I'm not part of that 14%. I've either been to concerned about spending my money here and now, or I've found the fine print in the brochures at the bank a little daunting, or I've just decided that I don't really care if I'm a millionaire when I'm sixty-five, since by then Cthulhu will return and end the world, most likely.

What someone needs to design is an economic system that depends on hedonism, ignorance, and apathy. I'd do very well in that system, I think.

The Master Plan

Back in my "Ten Reasons to Believe in God: or Why I am an Athiest" post I gave a list of what I thought were the ten best non-strawmen arguments for believing in God. Some of these reasons I've tackled in various posts over the years, but today I'm going to take a stab at one of the more interesting ones: The Master Plan.

The Master Plan argument takes two forms. First, there is the grand scale argument that overlaps with the Argument by Design. Our world exists through such an unlikely combination of chance events, it's difficult to look at it and not suspect that there must have been some sort of plan behind it all. For instance, consider the amazing oddity of solar eclipses. The sun and the moon are very different sizes and very different distances. The odds that they should have the exact same diameter in our sky are, if you'll pardon the expression, astronomical. Yet, against all odds, the sun and the moon exist at the same apparent size in our sky, to the degree that the moon can perfectly block out the sun save for a tiny, perfect circle of fire.

And here's further food for thought about eclipses: They weren't the same in pre-human history. The moon is slowly moving away from earth. When dinosaurs roamed the world, the moon was larger in they sky than the sun. In a few million years, the moon will be far enough away that it will no longer be able to produce a total eclipse. So, it's not only an amazing coincidence that the sun and the moon are the same size--they just happen to be the same size at the moment that a species on earth is capable of witnessing them and understanding them.

The unliklihood of the solar eclipse seems too amazing for it not to mean something. I feels almost like God signing his work. Yet: If God wished to sign his work, and was willing to put in the effort of building a sun and moon and earth of exactly the right sizes and positions to make this possible... couldn't he have been a little less obscure? Why leave a calling card that, while unlikely, isn't impossible to produce by pure chance? It's unlikely that you or I will ever win a lottery, yet, it's inevitible that some people win. It's unlikely that any given planet around a star will have a moon and a sun with the same apparent size, yet, since there are likely trillions of planets, it's inevitable that this alignment will happen somewhere in the universe. Our number came up.

For the possible to occur, even against long odds, requires no leaps of faith. So, I find the grand scale version of the Master Plan ultimately unpersuasive; until someone shows me something that truly could not have happened by pure chance, even if that chance was a billion to one, chance still remains a more plausible explanation than God.

The small scale argument is, I think, a more difficult one to refute. Not on a logical level, perhaps. But, on a gut level, almost everyone finds that there are events that occur in their lives that feel as if a guiding power brought them to a significant moment. I've mentioned before that I got served my divorce papers on Valentine's Day, and the official court date for the end of the marriage was April Fool's Day. It just feels so literary and appropriate that it must have some meaning; one could argue that God appreciates irony, if nothing else.

Once, while rock-climbing, the climber above dislodged a stone almost exactly the size of my head. It fell about fifty feet toward me, hit the rock in front of me, richocheted, and passed over my left shoulder, close enough to snag stray hairs sticking out from under my helmet. A few inches to the right, and it might have killed me. I almost certainly would have needed significant dental work. I know dozens of other people who share similar close calls; probably more people have these close calls than don't. It's unsatisfying to think: I was a coin flip away from being dead. You don't want to think that life can end due to such random, pointless events. It makes the world seem scary that you can die for no reason at all.

On the other hand, a close call like this can impart meaning on a life. I know people who feel that their close calls were actually wake up calls. God shakes you up a little now and then, gives you a little slap to get your attention, then steers you back onto the right path.

This is a tough argument to refute because, on some levels, I don't want to refute it. I know people who have used close calls as a reason to turn their lives around. In college I had a friend who was an alcoholic; finally, he got scared enough that he turned to God instead of a bottle. What kind of cad would I be to tell him that's the wrong path? I know another friend who told me point blank that, without his knowing that there was a loving God watching out for him, he wouldn't be able to handle all the tragedies in his life. I think of God as a product of imagination... but if this product of imagination is sufficient to give some people the strength to get out of bed in the morning, why should I make it my duty to go around kicking away people's crutches?

I don't believe that any higher power is communicating with us when we have these close calls, or the weird literary twists like a Valentine's Day divorce. Chance events happen. We may not be happy at the thought that our lives are in the hands of purely random events, yet, time and again, it's been proven that they are. It doesn't mean you can't draw lessons from them. From some of my own close calls, I don't need a higher power to draw a message: Life is short and precious. Keep moving foward while you can.

As to why I might be tempted to kick away the crutch that is God... I think that there's a certain inherent value in learning that you can stand on your own two feet. There's a famous schmaltzy fable about footprints on a beach. There are two sets of foot prints, but when the going gets rough, there's only one. The sinner knows the second set of foot prints belongs to God and says, "God, when times are tough, I see you abandoned me." God says, "No, when times were tough, that is when I carried you."

Is it such a crime to think that healthy adults don't need to be carried through their difficulties? That there's a dignity to walking the whole way through sheer will and toughness? Discovering that you are strong enough to achieve things without the support of imaginary friends is, I think, an important step toward living a fulfilling life. And if you need a master plan to give your life meaning, do what I did: Write your own.

Abuses of Power

The scandal of the week seems to be the bonuses paid to executives at AIG, a company that is only afloat because congress has okayed an almost endless pump of money to flow into it. They've spent more to keep AIG afloat in the past six months than they've spent on national parks, law enforcement, education, prisons, roads, or toilet seats for submarines. Of course, there's outrage that executives of a company that is such a sieve of tax dollars are paid any bonuses at all.

Today, congress approved at tax that is carefully crafted to take back all the money from the bonuses (save for a modest $250,000 per bonus... we don't want to leave these people homeless after all).

I've listened to the bloodlust on the radio and I find myself, once again, on the wrong side of public opinion. I'm far, far more disturbed that congress has just used our tax code -- laws that are supposed to produce the revenue to fuel our government -- as a punitive measure to single out and take the money from a few hundred employees that are currently at the top of the public's shit list. If this passes the senate, and is signed into law, this opens the door for abuses I don't even want to contemplate. If we say it's okay to tax this handful of people at rates of almost 90% in order to soothe public outrage, then what happens the next time someone unpopular suddenly finds themselves getting rich, or richer? You think, "Hey! That would be great!" Oil executives? Tax 'em until no one dares own a rig, let alone an oil refinery. Big pharma? They're all blood suckers! Let's suck them dry first. Tobacco execs? They're damn close to murderers. Don't leave them a dime.

Using the tax code to punish may sound like a good idea... as long as your friends are in power. Let's say that you are a devoted liberal, and feel that there should be strong economic penalties on tobacco execs, oil men, and people who look at cancer patients as economic resources to be exploited. You will use the power of taxation only to further the public good.

But, only a fool would think that their party and friends will hold power in Washington forever. Sooner or later, those oilmen and tobacco execs are going to run for congress since it pays better, and the next thing you know they'll have the power to tax the things they find distasteful--windmill farms and personal trainers and any movie star who goes to the third world and returns with more children than she left with.

Don't give political powers to your friends if you wouldn't trust the same powers to your enemies.

So, I really hope that congress fails to enact this tax. And, finally... is anyone else stunned that a congress that is passing a budget his year that will be over ONE TRILLION DOLLARS IN THE RED is daring to scold anyone on their economic mismanagement? It's congress who should most be ashamed that they are collecting paychecks. In December, they asked the auto company CEO's if they would be willing to work for a dollar a year until their companies were back on track. Would congress do the same until they pass a balanced budget?

Three ideas for saving the nation; or, why we are doomed.

It's pretty easy to knock the current economic plans being advanced by our leaders. The plan of Obama and the democrats basically boils down to spending a lot of borrowed money. Pouring 1.6 trillion in borrowed money into the economy may indeed prove stimulating. If I add up the credit limits on all my credit cards, I can borrow roughly $70,000 dollars. I could run out tomorrow and spend it all, maybe on a hurricane tour of Vegas. I would certainly feel very rich for a short while. A lot of businesses would feel the benefit of me throwing money around like the sy is the limit. My neighbors might look at me with envy as I pull into the driveway with a new car. I'd be high on the hog--until I had to start paying it back.

I'd probably be okay for a little while. The payments on all this would be pretty high, but I still have my job and some money in savings, so I could meet the payments for a month or two. After I pay down the debt for a couple of months, I could borrow money from the credit I'm opening up in my credit cards and make payments for another month or two.

Still, anyone with a lick of common sense is going to be able to look at my monthly income and compare to my monthly payments and come to the grim conclusion that I don't stand a chance in the long run. Bankruptcy looms; my only hope is to sell the car I bought, sell all my assets, work multiple jobs, and live on Raman noodles and tap water.

This year, our government is going to spend roughly twice as much as it takes in in taxes. If it's a stupid idea for me to do this as an individual, can some one explain why it's a good idea for us to do this collectively? The one advantage the government has is it can print money. But, it can't change the actual value of money; it tomorrow it decides to just double the amount of currency in the system, it will have the effect of halving the value of our currency. (If we're lucky, half.)

So, are we doomed? Probably. I don't see anyone rising on our political scene anytime soon who will be able to take us in the direction of fiscal sanity.

Still, just for the fun of playing make believe, here are some ideas for how we could get out of our present mess. We don't have to be doomed. I think there are actions we could take today that would result in us being a financial powerhouse again within my lifetime:

A. Stop spending more than we bring in on stuff we don't need. See my previous beaver management post. Unfortunately, cutting out trivia like beaver and cricket management will only make a small dent in the budget. To seriously impact the budget, we have to slash some sacred cows. Here are a few cuts, in order of their likelihood of causing riots:

1. I love NASA. I think that it is good for us collectively to explore Mars with robotic probes. I think that our long term survival may one day depend on our ability to find all the asteroids and comets that pass near us and be able to shoot them out of the sky. But: Mars isn't going anywhere. If we have to shut down our space program until we are back into financial health, I'm willing to make that cut. We can go back again in 50 years and it won't be all that different.

2. Social security and other benefits must be means tested. Right now, the benefits are paid blindly regardless of how wealthy you are. This is fundamentally fair. If we only gave the benefit to the poor, it would be, in effect, a penalty on responsible people who planned for their retirement. But... so what? If we don't find cuts to make somewhere, responsible people are going to be penalized anyway by hyperinflation. Social Security is the single largest item in the budget. We can't do anything that will have any real impact without at least slowing its growth.

3. Close up shop on the American empire. We currently have troops stationed in 140 different companies. Our spending on defense is more than all the other countries of the world combined. Do we really still need troops in Germany and Japan? Once we go to war, are we obligated to leave troops there forever, paying lease money on bases to the host countries? Bring the boys back home. We have 55 nuclear subs lurking in oceans around the world serving as mobile missile bases, waiting to launch a final strike in the event of nuclear war. Why? It seems like we could get the same deterent effect out of, say, 5 or 10. Assuming we even need a deterent effect any more. Pakistan has, like, 1 bomb, and we aren't going to go to war with them, even though this is the country Osama bin Laden is probably hiding in. With nukes, a little goes a long, long way.

B: If you found yourself overwhelmed by your debts, one thing you could attempt would be to sell off your assets. It's a little different from increasing revenue; if I decided to liquidate my comic book collection, I'd get a one time burst of cash, but have no comic books left. Other people might have heirloom silver or jewelry that could bring high dollars. It's heartbreaking to sell these things, but such is life. It's time to look at what the government can put up for sale.

I'm not sure what the riot factors of any of these are, but let's just go for them:

1. We own millions of acres of national park land. I'm a fan of national parks; I frequently pay visits to them. But... we aren't going to be able to enjoy these parks if the economic house of cards collapses and we revert to cannibalism. Tough choices must be made. For instance, there are long stretches of shoreline around all four coasts that are protected as national parks. Ocean front property is big dollar property. We can put half of what we own up for sale. Developers will spend billions to snap this land up. Or, alternatively, state and environmental trusts will match or beat their offers. We could rig the auctions to weight the bid of an environmental group at twice the value of a developer. And, maybe once we are back on our financial footing, we can look at buying some of this stuff back. But for now, I'm guessing this could be extremely lucrative. (Though, admittedly, this is just a guess. I'm too lazy to do actual research into the true value of the assets held by national parks.)

2: For the land we continue to manage, when we lease rights, make those rights reflect their actual worth, rather than the sweetheart deals that are currently the norm. This can go hand in hand with expanding the areas we put up for lease.

3: How's this for a radical idea: Let's sell all the books in the Library of Congress. We'll of course keep scans of everything. But, look, Ghandi's sandles and glasses just recently brought in over a million dollars at auction. The Library of Congress contains books from Thomas Jefferson's personal collection. The highest price a rare book has ever sold for was $8 million for J.J. Audubon's Birds of America. I'm guessing many of the books in the collection could match or beat this price. I'm also guessing that there's a warehouse somewhere in Washington full of all the small stuff left behind by the Presidents. Every family that moves in redecorates; you know that somewhere there's a crate that contains all the drapes and bedsheets from when Herbert Hoover lived there. Maybe Ronald Reagan left his toothbrush in the white house medicine cabinet... he was getting kind of absent minded. I bet there are Reagan worshippers out there who would pay top dollar for his toothbrush. Maybe they could capture some DNA from it and try to clone him.

And, how's this for a plan: The white house has a lot of unused bedrooms. Why not insist that our presidents have roommates? I found a roommate to help cover expenses. Obama can suck it up and do the same.

C: The American Endowment. Ivy League colleges have endowments. Someone, or groups of someones, give them big chunks of money and this money gets invested and the colleges get wealthier and wealthier, even as the government funnels more taxes to them in the form of grants. Harvard has an endowment of 34 billion dollars (at least it did before the stock market tanked). What we need is an endowment for America. We know that Barack Obama can ask people for money, and they'll give it to him. He raised more money than he could spend in a political campaign; that's just jawdropping, considering how wasteful campaigns can be.

Right now, if Obama put out a call for all American's to pay an extra hundred dollars to help offset the budget deficit, I'm willing to bet he'd collect a healthy sum, though nowhere nearly enough to actually dent the deficit. Still, one reason I'd be reluctant to contribute to such a call is I know that the money I sent in would instantly be spent. It was spent before anyone even thought to ask me for it, in fact.

But, what if we had an endowment that American's could contribute to that was going to serve as a national trust fund? We could establish it for a set number of years-twenty five would be a good target. During these 25 years, we could only put money into the fund, and draw nothing out of it. We could launch the fund with a giant telethon. Bill Clinton could play his sax. Obama could auction off baby kisses. Dick Cheney could agree to stand in a stockade and let people throw tomatoes at him for a thousand bucks a pop. At the end of the evening, we'd have tens of millions of dollars. Then... we'd invest this conservatively. Only buy stocks with P/E ratios of 15/1 or better. Have a nice mix of bonds and money market accounts. Every year at tax time, we could have a check-off box asking if you wanted to contribute $5 to the fund. We could have the world's biggest bake sale on the national mall. We keep adding to the savings, and allow the power of compound interest to grow the endowment. Then, if we got the rest of our financial house in order in the intervening 25 years, perhaps we would be in a shape that when we start drawing on the endowment 25 years from now, we could use it to pay down the national debt, which is still going to be around. Maybe we could buy back some of those parks we sold, and look at sending people to the moon again. Instead of us borrowing money from China and Saudi Arabia, maybe we'd be in a position to loan them some dough.

In short, my plan breaks down to:
1: Cut spending. Stop borrowing.
2: Sell assets to pay down debt (or, get a roommate to share expenses).
3: Put money into savings and don't mess with it for a long time.

This happens to be my own personal plan for financial health. It's common sense, requires a little discipline, and trades luxuries today for a more comfortable and financially sound future. It can be done! There is hope!

.... yeah. I know. I think we're doomed too.

Federal Beavers

McCain this week railed against the pork in the latest budget. If he'd run as this McCain, I might have voted for him; instead he tossed aside every limited government idea he ever had to support last fall's bank bailout before he'd ever seen the bill.

One of the items in the budget McCain ridiculed was $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi. David Price, my congressman here in NC, is responsible for the earmark, and today's paper carried his impassioned defense of the importance of beaver management.

In an odd coincidence, I've lived in both North Carolina and Mississippi, and these are the only two states where I've ever seen a beaver dam. I'm going walking later today, and the last time I went a little off trail I found two beaver dams on the same stream. The banks of the Eno are lined with trees and branches showing the handiwork of beavers who, I have to say, frequently chew off more than they can bite.

The damns can cause flooding, so I can see why it's important that somebody take control and remove potentially harmful dams. And, I can also admit that $650,000 is a really trivial amount of money as far as the federal government goes. It's, what, five or six toilet seats for the space shuttle?

But, here's the larger issue: It doesn't matter if it's not much money, or if it's a good cause. If it's in the federal budget, it should be for a project of national importance. How, exactly, is a person in Nevada benifited by having even a fraction of a penny of their tax dollars go to beaver management? Conversely, if there's money in the budget for managing Mormon crickets (which there is), how does this benefit me in North Carolina? (On a side note, the existence of Mormon crickets is a real testament to the persistance of Mormon missionaries, isn't it? I also thought I'd have a praying mantis joke here, but it turns out I don't.)


I can't speak for Mississippi, but North Carolina isn't a poor state. There are houses within a mile of me that sell for more than $650,000. If the people of North Carolina want to manage their beavers, we should hassle our state government to do the job. We could pay for the cost of the whole thing by issuing a "Busy Beaver" scratch off ticket through the state lottery.

Once you decide that it's appropriate to spend federal taxes on limited, local problems that are well within the scopes of local governments to pay for, what are the limits to federal spending? If you start funding beaver management, the day will come when you fund Elvis museums and gene-mapping for tobacco and rescue plans for car companies. It's the slippery slope argument--except that the slippery slope is often a fallacy, but in this case we're already sliding down the slope, full speed toward the cliff.

Is there no one left to put on the brakes?