A last post on writing before a month long break...

Sorry for the lackluster post rate lately. I'm posting more frequently at my dragon blog these days as I work to promote Dragonforge. The prospects of more heavy posting in August look dim. I've got to turn in the third Bitterwood book, Dragonseed, at the end of August. I'm still working on the second draft, and am probably going to wind up with only three weeks to finish the final draft. That means I'll need to be reading aloud and polishing 10 chapters each week. Eek! I'm not complaining. Getting that immersed in a writing project is actually pretty close to my dream life. But, it definitely means a fall off in blogging until the book is turned in.

So, since it may be a month before I get back to this blog with a substantial post, I figured I'd toss out a bit of writing advice that crystalized for me just this week. Many writers struggle with backstories for their characters. How to get all the information in about what has gone before is a challenge, and leads to the dreaded writing technique known as infodumping. So, here's a different way of thinking about backstory that may be of use: Turn your backstory into setting details.

For instance, if you were to visit my house, a halfway careful observer would figure out a lot of my personal backstory just by looking at my walls. It would probably be fairly simple to deduce that I'm a writer, given that I have covers of my books framed and displayed in my living room, as well as a shelf there with a copy of every anthology I've ever been published in, as well as all three of my novels, including ARCs. Oh, also some posters from bookstore signings. You would also find a photo of Laura prominently displayed in my living room; since there's no woman living with me, you might guess it's a girlfriend, but if you dug around a little you'd find the obituary I keep in the white table in the living room. There's also picture frame on my bookshelf that opens into a small photo album; it would be simple to deduce what had happened to Laura by following the sequence of photo there.

When you are crafting scenes, remember that characters aren't just sitting around in their houses or cars or workplaces... they are sitting in the middle of their backstories. If you carefully focus the camera of your prose upon the right details of the setting, you will reveal things about the character's past. A key example of this from Dragonforge would be the second chapter, when Graxen and the Matriarch are speaking in the thread room. There are tapestries on the walls that tell the entire racial history of the sky-dragons. I don't describe the history page after page, but I do describe the tapestries enough to bring it to life in the reader's mind, and the presence of the tapestries serves at key moments in the conversations as jumping off points for talking about backstory without it seeming infodumpy. It's natural that they should briefly discuss Vendevorex, for instance, because there's a blackboard where the Matriarch updates her genealogical notes and Vendevorex's name is written on the board in bold letters and surrounded by question marks. The matriarch doesn't know his origins, and it's her job to know everyone's origins... and we can learn this because of the setting detail that invites this explanation. And, we also get a very brief summary of the conclusion of Vendevorex's storyline from the first novel. Again, it doesn't feel like a naked infodump because it flows from the setting.

So tie your setting and backstory together whenever possible. It makes both richer.

More posts on writing will be coming next month!

Cuteness as an evolutionary strategy

I've been assured by fellow codexian bloggers that I'll double my readership if I start adding pictures of my cats. At first I thought, yeah, that's not going to happen. Readers of this blog come here for my discussion of politics and religion, as well as the occasional advice on writing. Cuteness has never really been part of the mix.

Then, I thought, well, why not? So, here they are, in all their feline glory:

Isosceles is 14 years old, blind in his right eye, and cannot drink water like a normal cat. He must instead splash the water all over the kitchen, then like his paws. I'm told that this isn't that strange of a behavior, that, having evolved in deserts, cats dislike large still bodies of water. I feel like evolution has had more than enough time to get them out of that habit, but what do I know.

Sarah is about 9 years old and insists on drinking her water straight from the faucet. She also assumes that the bathroom sink was built as a cat bed. She is perhaps the least aloof cat in the world. She has absolutely no fear of strangers, and if you sit down on my house, she has some sort of lap-radar that will bring her running to sit on you.

Since it's been a while since I did a science post, one of the things that most interests me about cats is how humans and cats (and other animals) are co-evolving. We seem to be selecting them for increasing cuteness. It's obvious that they've thrived as a result--there are cats in the US with better health insurance than many kids. Somehow, cats trigger all the instincts in humans that make us treat them as if they are our own babies--small, crying creatures that respond to perpetual nursing.

It's obvious why cats benefit from this relationship. But, it's also easy to see that, by evolving instincts that found cats to be cute, humans increased their survival odds as well. Having lots of cats around is a good way of not having lots of mice and rats around--or, for that matter, spiders, snakes, and various other creepy crawlies that my cats seem hardwired to hunt. So, in some ways, they repay us better than babies, which just lay around all day and are real slackers in the vermin hunting department.

Of course, I don't have a lot of mice or snakes around my house reguardless. And, snakes would be just as good at keeping the mice population down anyway. So, perhaps my theories about cuteness as an evolutionary strategy has a few holes in it.

If any has any suggestions on how to get either of these critters to reliably drink from a water bowl, I'd love to hear it by the way. There's nothing quite like getting into bed and having a cat with cold wet paws walk across your back.

By the way, it remains unlikely I will be posting wacky pictures of them with "I can haz" captions.

Unless the hits on this post really spike. Then, I can't promise anything.

My first ever blog post composed on a cell phone

I'm at the beach, sitting in the crows nest of a beachhouse, typing a blog post on my phone. It's one of those strange moments when I worry that my sense of wonder is either underdeveloped - I am, after all twenty yards from the Atlantic and completely ignoring it - or overdeveloped, since I'm feeling all tingly with gadget awe, and the uncanny sense that the future has arrived.

We live in a world of casual miracles. Today I've communicated with people on three different continents, messages flying around the globe in seconds. Earlier, I rode to the beach in my friend Cheryl's hybrid Toyota. It converted five gallons of gas into 200 miles of forward motion, and in under four hours we'd covered a distance that once would have required days.

Of course, my sense of wonder is tempered by a fair share of pessimism. Not more than an hour ago, I had a conversation where I adopted the rather sour opinion that we are on the brink of a new depression. So much of our current prosperity seems built on unsubstainable debt. A viscious cycle of ever increasing debt defaults will lead to less credit, leading to more default, until everyone is living on actual cash in hand-a situation that will topple the structure of our economy.

But then I go up above the roofline, look at the ocean, and write about it on my phone, and I feel like things will be fine. There is so much innovation and progress - We'll beat this current downtick. I can't imagine how, but I didn't see blogs, cell phones, or hybrid cars coming either.

Sometimes, I worry about my mood swings...

Odyssey Fantasy Writer's Workshop

In the last two weeks, I've driven an insane number of miles. First, I drove 700 miles to Chatanooga to attend a gathering of my fellow Codexians. We were graciously hosted by the family of Codexian Mary Robinette Kowal, and had as a special guest the legendary editor Ellen Datlow. Best-selling author David B. Coe also made a special appearance for a night of grilling... I don't mean barbeque, I mean we questioned him about every last aspect of making a living as a writer, and his answers were an inspiration for everyone in the room. Codexwriters.com was started a few years ago by Luc Reid as a gathering place for writers at the start of their career. It's members have since gone on to publish more books than I can count. One of the qualification that will let you join the group is if you've attended one of the major writing workshops, like the Odyssey Workshop in New Hampshire.

I attended that Odyssey back in 1998, and learned from such luminaries as Harlan Ellison and James Morrow. So, it was a tremendous honor to leave Chatanooga after a wonderful long weekend of writing and drive 1200 miles to Manchester New Hampshire, to return to Odyssey as a guest teacher.

There are certain milestones in my life that have increasingly made me feel like a writer. It seems odd, perhaps, that after having written 8 novels, 60ish short stories, and published a respectable chunk of them, that I still sometimes have to remind myself that, oh, yeah, I'm a writer. The goal I sat out to achieve back when I was 25 has been met. I can walk into almost any Barnes and Noble in America and find my books. For that matter, I could walking into any Waterstones in the UK and get them as well. I'm invited to be a guest at cons, editors of magazines solicit stories from me, and I actually have, you know, made a little money at this game. Yet, none of these accomplishments have quite given me the adreneline rush that returning to Odyssey did. Because, when I was at this workshop ten years ago, with every writer who visited to teach, I was sitting in the classroom thinking, "One day, I want to be up there." So, last Friday was one of the greatest days of my life.

Also, one of the most nerve-wracking. I've never really been nervous about speaking in public. I'm really comfortable when I'm on panels at cons, and I love doing readings and signings. Yet, at Odyssey, I was a complete nervous wreck the whole time I was in front of the class. Part of it was that I'd made the mistake of reading my lecture out loud the night before around midnight, when I should have been going to bed... and realizing that my lecture was the dullest, driest, most boring thing I'd ever written. So, the next day in class, I pretty much decided to wing it. I had a few excercises to fall back on. I knew the big points I wanted to make. I had no idea if I had enough material to fill up 2.5 hours. Also, I'd forgotten to turn my cell phone off, so the whole time I was in front of the class, I kept thinking, "It's going to ring... NOW. It's going to ring... NOW." Luckily, it didn't ring. The more or less random collection of thoughts I had bouncing around in my skull all managed to find their way out without me saying anything too embarassing.

The subject I was speaking on was "How to get a reader past the first page." Fortunately, I'd stumbled onto a good metaphor for the point I wanted to make as I was getting ready for the workshop. During my ten days away from home, I'd saved a shirt and a pair of pants specifically to wear when I taught the class. I'd obsessed about what I was going to wear for months. I didn't want to go too formal... I'm there to lecture on writing, not banking. On the other hand, a tee-shirt and shorts seemed perhaps a bit too casual. So, I'd saved a pair of black jeans that are well broken in without being torn or stained, some nice shoes that were a decent balance of dressy and comfortable, and a Hawiian shirt that's actually moderately tasteful... it's black with large pale flowers, nothing too loud. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I was going to dress myself because I know that visuals matter. I was going to be judged before I ever opened my mouth. Which led me to the most important point I had to make about writing: A writer must dress the first page of his story with the same care and obsession that I brought to dressing myself to teach the class. The images and sensory detail matter to readers judging your story in the same way that they matter to students judging a teacher.

Of course, it's difficult for many writers to think of details, especially the right details, to include on a first page. Writers need to have a mental bucket full of these images that they can draw upon when the time arrives to actually write. So, one of my excercises was to send the students on a mission to actually fill buckets with images. I gave them stacks of paper strips only an inch tall and three inches wide and told them to go search for actual, concrete items that would be interesting if they were placed onto a page. This was a tough environment for this excercise, since classrooms aren't exactly full of exciting and interesting objects like jet fighters or switchblades or dragons. Yet, the class performed admirably, spreading forth and returning with strips of paper populated with autoflushing urinals, black gunk on the edge of the stairs, wet grass, and toenail fungus. We dumped out nouns into the bucket and passed them around, with everyone taking six and writing a story opening with all the elements interwoven.

I must say, they did a great job. This was a really talented class. My fellow Solaris author Justin Gustainis was there as a student, as well as fellow Codexian Sara King. In all, I read and critiqued 7 stories by 6 authors, and, with no offense to my classmates from back in 1998 intended, I thought that, based on this random sample, this was a much more advanced collection of students than it was when I attended. It makes sense, I suppose. Odyssey was fairly new when I attended. Now it's starting to rival Clarion in reputation. Competition to get into the workshop is no doubt becoming more fierce with each year. Jeanne Cavelos, who runs the workshop, has certainly earned bragging rights in developing this workshop into such a success.

After the lecture and critiquing, the Odfellows had a cookout. I've never turned down free food in my life, so here's a photo of me chowing down, taken by Chad Wilson:

Although, upon closer inspection, despite the fact that my hand is near my mouth, I think I'm actually signing a book in this photo. I'd carried up a case of books and gave one to everyone at the workshop, so the aftermath of the cookout became my first ever outdoor book signing. Hopefully I didn't get too much mustard on the books... I'm going to make a bold, and potentially wrong, statement and say that the woman whose book I'm signing is Breanna Wojcik. Maybe. It will be embarrassing if I'm wrong, since I talked with Breanna for twenty minutes in a one on one critique of her stories. But I also talked to Jasmine Hammer as well for a one on one critique, and there's a reasonable chance this could be her. Or maybe it's neither of them. It was a long day. I can tell you in great detail about their stories (or could if the critiques weren't confidential), and can say with some authority that, whoever the hell this is, she's off to a good start as a writer.

If my memory has failed me after one week, I have a good excuse: Immediately after the cookout, I embarked on the 900 mile drive back to North Carolina. I was exhausted and nearly brain dead after over a week on the road, and what few synapses I still had firing were shocked into stupor when I paid $4.68 for gas in New York. I made it home roughly 24 hours after pulling out of New Hampshire and collapsed into my unmade bed instantly snoring for twelve hours while my cats crawled over me, licking my fingers and ears. They were either attempting to revive me in hopes I would give them attention after my long absense, or else taste-testing me in the event they are one day forced to feed upon my corpse. With cats, you just never know. *

*At the Codex gathering, I was assured by Laurel Amberdine and Jenny Rae Rappaport that if I talked about my cats on my blog, I'd double my readership. I'm not sure that they had in mind that my cat's first appearance here might be as potential body eaters, but what the hell.

Anthology Builder

I'm a featured author this month at Anthology Builder. Anthology Builder is a neat little concept that is a bit like a paper iPod--you go to the site, browse through the hundreds of authors and stories available, and select the stories you want to put into your custom anthology. You can then pick your cover and give your anthology a title. The anthology is printed out and shipped to you. Neat, yes? There's a $1 discount on the anthologies if you select a story by a featured author.

I've only got two stories available there at the moment, my two Asimov sales. "To the East, a Bright Star" is my first sale to Asimov's and is the story of a former circus acrobat as he navigates a flooded city on his way to watch a comet strike the earth. It's quite possibly the most thought-provoking story I've ever written. My second tale, "Final Flight of the Blue Bee," is about a former superhero sidekick named Stinger who's spent forty years in prison for murdering a supervillian. Stinger's finally been released and is seeking revenge on the Blue Bee, the superhero who abandoned him at his time of greatest need and allowed him to rot in prison. If you're a fan of Nobody Gets the Girl, my superhero novel, then Final Flight of the Blue Bee will be right up your alley.

Anthology Builder does let you see PDF previews of the stories. (It must allow a certain number of characters for the preview... I notice that some of the previews don't just end in mid-sentence, they end in mid-word!) It also has search functions that let you look for keywords, though I'm a bit confused as to how they work. "Superhero" doesn't turn up the Blue Bee story, nor does the word "bee." In fact, "flight" seems to be the only keyword that brings up the tale. Strange. Hopefully as the site grows, the search features will improve. One nice feature is you can sort stories by publication--so, if you like stories that appeared in Asimov's, you can see their whole stock of these stories quickly and easily. (All stories, it should be noted, are reprints from professional publications.)

I plan to add to my stock of stories on the site eventually. Unfortunately, my early Phobos tales are tied up by a bad contract I should never have signed. My stories at Intergalactic Medicine Show aren't available since they may be reprinted in an IGMS anthology--in fact, definitely will be, in the case of To Know All Things That Are In The Earth. A few of my other tales appear in small press POD anthologies, like Modern Magic or the Urban Bizarre, and I don't want to undercut potential sales of these books if a person wants to read my stories in them. Still, if I see that people are actually buying my stories on Anthology Builder, I may change my mind about what I make available there.

Check out the site. Looking it over, it makes me wish I was romantically involved with someone right now: a custom anthology of love stories seems like it would be perfect gift for a significant occasion. I probably wouldn't use the cover with the spaceship for this, though.

Essential Loneliness

I haven’t had a lot of success in my life building my own family. Both my marriages ended childless, which saved a lot of paperwork on the divorce, I must say, but that’s not a huge consolation. I’m deeply envious of people who’ve managed to select their mates wisely and raise children. It is, I think, one of the highest possible achievements of any human to launch a child safely and securely into adulthood.

Still, while my romantic entanglements have always been something of a mess, I’ve been much luckier in friendship. I have a wide circle of friends, including some I would count as true friends. As the old joke goes, a fried will help you move… a true friend will help you move a body. Fortunately I haven’t had to put these friendships to the body test yet, but I know in my heart who I’d make the first call to if the situation arose, and I know that not only would he help, he’d probably have the foresight to bring power tools. Of course his car isn’t very big… luckily I have another friend with a pickup truck, and I’m certain she would loan me a tarp, and I know she won’t rat me out.

I fear I’m veering off topic.

What I meant to get at when I sat down to write this post was that I think I have stumbled on to a key element to being a writer worth reading: the writer must always possess an essential loneliness.

Having a successful marriage and family won’t necessarily preclude this loneliness. Having good friends can’t truly cure this loneliness either. A writer, or any other artist, must always possess a sense that he is an outsider. Place him in the middle of a crowd, and he can never truly think of himself as part of that crowd. He is, instead, an observer of the crowd. If he’s participating in whatever the crowd is doing (cheering a rock band, for instance, or walking through a crowded mall the weekend before Christmas), he’ll still feel like he’s only pretending to be part of the group; on a deep level, he’ll never truly fit in.

It may be that everyone feels this way. It’s certainly a common theme in movies, books, and song lyrics. Far more likely, feeling this way may be a motivator to write movies, books, and song lyrics. Because one of the things that keeps me writing, day after day, year after year, is this never ending quest to explain myself. I am forever crafting small homunculi of myself and sending them out into the world via fiction, hoping they’ll find acceptance.

Writing has a way of weeding out a lot of lesser motivations. If you’re writing seeking fame and fortune, this might keep you going for a book or two, but you’re going to realize fairly quickly that fame as a writer means that in any random crowd, nobody is going to have a clue who you are. As for fortune… I suspect panhandling would probably provide a more steady income, and would keep you out in the fresh air and sunshine to boot. Most writers I know are pale people deficient in Vitamin D.

The one thing that kept me typing year after year, until I had committed a million words and then some to paper, was this quest to ease my loneliness by revealing hidden aspects of myself in fiction. When I first started writing, I used to have a fear that people would see too much of me in my writing. One reason I think I have found the modest success I have as a writer is that at some point I stopped being afraid that people would discover my dark secrets and started to embrace this as a hope. The stories that receive the greatest reaction are stories where I confess the things I least want the world to know about me. Admittedly, I do this obliquely… I place my hate into the character of Bitterwood. I place my more sadistic thoughts into Blasphet. My sleazier, cheesier elements find voice in Pet. In Nobody Gets the Girl, I confess my sense of being an outsider rather nakedly in the form of Richard Rogers, AKA Nobody, a man moving through the world as an unremembered ghost, invisible, intangible, hungry for the simplest human connections.

It is possible, of course, to write stories that don’t have this confessional element. I’ve certainly done so many times, and with some success… “Final Flight of the Blue Bee” will soon see publication for a third time, and I’m hard pressed to say that a reader would learn much about me reading it… except, perhaps, in the last moments of the story, when Stinger is falling to his death, and he yells out his final message to the Blue Bee. His voice is drowned out by the drone of the millions of bees that surround him. The most important words he’ll ever say go unheard. I think this moment captures my fundamental belief that, in the crucial moments, the things we most want to communicate are almost always missed somehow.

In the end, the feeling that I’ve never truly said what I most wanted to say is what keeps me coming back to blank pages again and again. I am forever tapping keys to fill the empty space with words, in a desperate attempt to keep myself from fading from this world, unknown, unremembered, a nobody.

Can a powerpoint presentation change the world?

Ross Perot is back! The last person to discuss the federal budget seriously with voters has launched a website discussing a doom I've been known to howl about here a time or two, the federal debt. It's a 20 minute power point presentation that you can watch here.

In four years of doing this blog, I've never directed readers toward videos of singing cats, nude celebrities, or politicians forgetting thier lines. So, hopefully I've earned your trust that I'm not going to direct you towards time-wasting trivia. This presentation corrects some of my doom and gloom statements about the federal debt. For instance, it's really closer to 5 trillion than the 9 trillion I quote, due to the so-called social security trust fund. Yet, in other ways, I've also underestimated the true size of the problem, and thought we could fix it if we'd just do stuff like not fighting in Iraq. Turns out, ending the war tomorrow wouldn't even make a dent.

In any case, I highly recommend the presentation. Whether you are liberal or conservative, democrat or republican, it can only help to get your hands on the facts.

Racing toward the End

I've been hunkered down writing a good bit of the day. There's also been some bill paying and air conditioner purchasing and installation mixed in there... we're pushing 100 degrees here in NC. I bought a 12,000 BTU model that's supposed to cool 550 square feet--roughly the area of my living room, office, and a bit of the kitchen. So far, the day is really testing the unit. Tomorrow, I'll install the much smaller 65000 BTU model in my bedroom and see if that helps things out. Days like today make me wonder if I'm wrong about global warming. But, of course, the data from any given city on any given day is pretty meaningless. And global warming is one of those issues where it really doesn't matter much if my opinion is right or wrong. So what? The reality is, we as a species are going to be pumping a lot more CO2 in the air next year, and we'll be pumping out more the year after that, and more the year after that. The AC unit in my window is making my carbon footprint bigger, but I'm one of the select few people on the planet that get to have AC. That's not going to last for long, though. The chinese are putting in AC. People in India are installing AC. Coal is going to be powering most of this.

And, of course, that's not even the big driver of greenhouse gasses. The big drivers are the agricultural systems that keep American's fat and happy... and, coming soon to a planet near you, steak-eating Chinese will make American's look like vegan sissies. Food follows money.

So, we're all doomed, unless we're wrong, and there are feedback systems in the planet that keep the thermostat stable, or unless the extra heat turns out not to matter all that much. The ice caps will melt, and we'll lose some tropical shoreline, but we'll start building beach houses in Russia and Canada, and life will roll on.

This wasn't at ALL what I sat down to talk about by the way. I'm actually sitting down to report that at some point tomorrow, I'll roll over the 120k mark on Dragonseed, the third Bitterwood book. Actually, there's a decent shot I'll roll past the 125k mark. I worked on Chapter 29 today. Tomorrow I'll do 30, and maybe go back and fill in a scene or two, and that will be the end of the first draft.

Right now, I'm in a good news/bad news sort of area, plot wise. I had really set myself a goal of finishing all the major plot threads raised in the trilogy at the end of this book. Any further books set in the Dragon Age were going to follow a different cast. But, while I'm confident I'll end the story of Bitterwood, it looks like I'm going to have to leave a few of the rest of the cast with some dangling plot threads. Not major ones, but my goal had been to have all the characters by the end of this book either living happily ever after, or dead. Now, it looks like I'll be getting many of my characters out of the fire at the end of the book, but still in a frying pan, so to speak. Ah well. These things happen. Rome wasn't built in a day, and the human/dragon struggle for dominance can't be completely resolved in a few books. It's like waving a magic wand and saying that the Palestinian/Isreali conflict is all better now.

Sunday, I plan to nap. Maybe go fishing, even with the heat. Maybe stretch out in front of the AC and read a book. Then... the rewrites begin. But, that's the thing about endings. They always seem to morph into beginnings.

Concarolinas and Creationism

I'm just back from Concarolinas in Charlotte. This is a kick-ass con, extremely well organized and well attended. I got to hang out with old friends like Ed Schubert, Gray Rhinehart, and Gail Martin, as well as making some new buddies like Jeremy Lewis and David B. Coe.

I'm exhausted though... I was on 11 panels this weekend, and my brain is now mush. My last panel of the day was on paranormal phenomena, and I was too bushed to rant.

One thing I really like about Concarolinas is that they do several science panels. I enjoy going to cons and talking about writing, but I LOVE talking about science, especially with folks who know what they are talking about.

One point that came up at the con was an argument put forth that creationism and evolution aren't incompatible. I've heard this argument many times. Basically, the logic is that the presense of evolution doesn't disprove the existence of a creator--which is something I freely concede. There could have been a creator. Or, all of reality could just be a computer simulation we're all trapped in without knowing it. Or, all of reality could just be the dream of an old man, and when he wakes up, everything will cease to be. However, just saying something could be true doesn't make it true.

Here's the difference between creationism and evolution: Evolution is well documented by physical evidence, both fossil and DNA, and by observation. Evolutionary theory makes predictions that can be tested. If we say that man evolved from a common anscestor with chimps and gorillas, then we should find evidence of such beings existing in times before there were humans and chimps... and we do.

Creationism makes no predictions. What is a feature you would expect to find in a created world that you wouldn't find in a world that just sort of came together over a long period of time? I can think of one obvious prediction: I would expect a created world to have been put together in a reasonably short period of time. It's taken about 4.5 billion years for man to appear on Earth... a span of time that just seems implausibly long if there were a guiding force. If God could make a living organism like a tree or a squirrel just by speaking them into existence, why would he bother with a seemingly endless cycle of creation and extinction of tree precursors and squirrel ancestors instead of just jumping straight to the final forms? But, this is, I admit, an easy target... I'm thinking of a prediction that others will no doubt argue is a stupid prediction. 4.5 billion years seems long to us, but maybe it's like an week for God. But, in that case, human life spans must be like nano seconds. We must flash in and out of existence at such an absurd rate that he can't possibly take time to get to know us. So... what am I being blind to? What is a testable prediction of creationism? What is the evidence that supports the theory?

I will say that, if there was a creator, he went through a hell of a lot of trouble to hide his workmanship. He created our world in the middle of an almost infinite multitude of stars, so that we wouldn't get all snooty and think our star was special. He created and destroyed billions of species over and over before he got around to making a species in his image that he intend to spend eternity either rewarding or punishing. And, the only people he's ever told the story to have been loners in the desert. He could have carved his signature in twenty mile letters on the moon. Or, he could, you know, have a blog or something. Anyone could just post a message in his forum and he could straighten them out on anything we might be unclear on. Instead of everyone arguing about gay marriage, he could just spell out his position. If he was smart enough to figure out DNA, it seems like HTML would be a breeze.

The Prophet and the Dragon

Last year around this time, I launched my Bitterwood blog. In retrospect, launching a blog that was dedicated to a single book was perhaps a bit short-sighted. So, this weekend I'm launching a new blog, The Prophet and the Dragon. It will be dedicated to all my Dragon Age titles--Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and the upcoming Dragonseed, as well as any novels that may follow this.

To launch it, I'm kicking it off with a recipe for Bitterwood's Dragon Tongue Chili, and a contest! I'll be giving away a signed copy of Dragonforge every Wednesday in June, and you can also win a complete Dragon Age collection, Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and the Solaris Book of New Fantasy. The contest rules are at the top of the new blog.

Will things get better, or worse?

As a science fiction author, I spend a lot of time imagining what the future will be like. Though, I suspect the implied causality of that sentence is flipped. Because I spend a lot of time imagining what the future will be like, I became a science fiction author, is perhaps more accurate.

Most SF visions of the future fall into two categories: Utopias and dystopias. The world either gets much, much better or much, much worse. Utopias aren't lacking in conflict, nor are dystopias lacking in their rewards. The Star Trek series is essentially utopian. People have come together and worked out their differences more or less peacefully and banded together on a shared goal of intergalactic exploration. Technology has gotten cleaner and better. There doesn't seem to be a lot of poverty. The Star Wars series tilts toward dystopia... there's an evil empire that goes around blowing up planets that challenge its authority. There does still seem to be a lot of poverty, and more than a little racism, or at least speci-ism, with comments like, "I'd sooner kiss a wookie!" And, apparently, it's still possible to be sold into slavery on the black market. Yet, even against this backdrop, the people don't seem to be miserable. There's still music in the bars. People get together and watch pod-racing. They master they world they live in and endure, even thrive.

So which direction are we trending? By "we," I mean all of humanity. Is the world getting better? Or are we racing toward misery?

Trends that hint at a brighter future:

1. The growth of knowledge. This is a powerful one. As a species, we are simply better informed today than at any point in history. We've figured out the basic fundamentals of biology, chemistry, and physics. We know more about fighting diseases than ever. We know more about growing crops. We know how to purify drinking water, and move goods and services and people around the planet, and we have all these wonderful information technologies that let us move knowledge around the planet in seconds. Knowledge is a powerful tool for fighting human misery. It seems almost fated that, as more and more people learn more and more things, life will get better.

2. The spread of innovation. This is an outgrowth of the first one. In the last two centuries, innovation and invention flowed from a few hotspots--America and northern Europe. For whatever reason, all the life changing technologies like electricity, vaccines, telephones, computers, automobiles, planes, etc. were coming from a fairly limitted geographical area. They say that neccessity is the mother of invention. I suspect, however, that the true mothers of invention are education, wealth, property rights, and good patent and copyright laws. A relatively small portion of the world's population enjoyed these things over the last two centuries. Toward the end of the twentieth century, we began to see innovation spread to places like Japan and South Korea, as they took things like cars and stereos and television and began to find ways of making them better. Now, we're on the threshhold of truly world-wide innovation. Wealth and education are spreading to places like India, China, and Brazil. American's are going to keep buying oil to run our cars as it rolls up to 200 dollars a barrel. We're invested too heavily in the infrastructure of oil. But, countries like Brazil are already shifting their cars to a biofuel economy. By developing later, it's easier to move to better technologies without being tied to older ones. It similar to places like India leapfrogging over building a network of landline phones and just moving directly to cell phones. I was listening to an NPR report about how advanced cell phones are in places like India and South Korea when compared to American cell phones. They have better networks and more features because they aren't laying the new technology onto an network build decades before.

The point is, we aren't going to depend on a small handful of countries for innovation any more. We're going to see it becoming global.

3. The decline of war. War certainly hasn't gone away. Many places are still wracked with internal conflicts and civil wars. But, it seems like the full-blown invasions where one country decides its going to roll into and take another country are on the decline. Invading armies were commonplace throughout the twentieth century. Japan invaded China and Korea. Germany invaded France and Poland. Russia grabbed the Eastern Bloc and Afganistan. Iraq grabbed Kuwait. And then... it stopped. Many countries are still occupied by their old invaders, but the wholesale scramble of countries grabbing adjacent territories seems to have slowed to a trickle. The one big exception, of course, is America's "liberation" of Iraq. That went so well, however, that it may truly be the last true American war. The political costs have been so high that it's difficult to imagine a president in the next half century launching a similar adventure. And, the economic costs of this and other things are on the verge of clipping America's wings. We won't be able to invade other countries because we won't be able to afford it. And, I think this is going to be the true end of full blown war. At some point in the last few decades, it simply stopped making economic sense. Invading neighbors has been politically and economically ruinous for the invaders time and time again.

Trends that point toward misery:

1. The embrace of ignorance. Here's a curious trend: As knowledge has grown, and technology gotten more complex, it feels like the world has become increasingly dumber. There are a few people who understand their cars, their phones, or even their televisions. They can operate them, but they can't really understand them. There is also a fall off in basic knowledge. American's are trained universally how to read and write, and the fundamentals of math. Most people have basic training in science, history, civics, and economics. When I look at the things kids are learning in thier text books these days, I feel like they are certainly being exposed to a vigorous and wide-ranging base of knowledge. Yet, it seems like by the time these kids reach adulthood, all this knowledge evaporates. They could read, but they don't, and the ability to communicate by writing and reading withers. They could do math, but they don't, and lose the ability to figure out a 15% tip, or figure out the square footage of a room. On my day job, I do a lot of things that require some basic math, and I find that people have just lost the ability to understand numbers any more.

I sometimes wonder if television, computers, and calculators haven't somehow crippled us intellectually. True story: I spoke to a woman on the phone a few days ago who couldn't find our store. She was following a GPS device and our address wasn't coming up when she programmed it in. So, I tried giving her directions. My work is really simple to get to: It's right off the interstate. If you can find the interstate, and read exit numbers, you can find us. But, she sounded almost panicky as I tried to give her the very simple directions. She kept getting stressed that her GPS didn't show a shopping center off the exit I gave her. It was as if, if her GPS didn't believe we were there, then she couldn't believe we were there.

I have no hard data. I'm not even sure how you would test something like this. But, it feels like people are becoming less knowledgable as knowledge technology improves. Once we have machines to do our thinking for us, we seem to embrace ignorance. The main purpose of the mind ceases to be the pursuit of knowledge and becomes instead the constant quest for distraction and entertainment.

This seems dangerous in the long term for two reasons: First, people no longer seem able to judge the pronouncements of their political leaders. We start to base our decisions on who looks better on television and who is funnier in a debate rather than on who is actually better informed. Once the population loses the ability to judge our politicians, it seems we are fated to drift toward a government that more closely resembles the Star Wars dystopia than the Star Trek utopia. Secondly, the world is so interconnected that I worry that the stupid decisions of a few could wind up dragging us all down. The mortgage crisis is a good example. People were taking out loans they didn't understand. Now, everyone's home value is likely to decline, and responsible homeowners with good credit such as myself will wind up paying more for our next mortgage because we'll be paying for the losses of people who made foolish, ill-informed choices.

2. The rise of complexity. As technology spreads, and innovation spreads, it's going to become increasingly difficult to keep track of everything. There was a time when the study of radioactivity was relatively unregulated. I have comic books from the early 1940s where kids could order radiactive elements, including uranium, as part of a home laboratory. Fortunately, we figured out in a reasonably short period of time that this stuff was risky and passed regulations that kept us from poisoning ourselves with these dangerous substances. A similar response was called for with DDT and flourocarbons. We've been able to identify the dangers we are creating with our technological advances and nip the more harmful ones before the damage becomes permanent. But, this was when the world was much smaller. It wasn't that hard to band together to regulate DDT and flourocarbons. The manufacture was controlled by countries based in North America and Europe, places where representative governments have incentives not to kill off their populations. But, the next environmental threat to arise from our own cleverness could spread much more rapidly than these previous technologies, and be manufactured in more locations, and in countries with more authoritarian governments. Here's an completely imaginary scenario: Some bioengineered virus thats supposed to attack some obscure wheat fungus could be invented in South Korea, be in use worldwide five years later, and two years after that we start hearing reports about the world wide decline in earthworms. We take five years to argue about whether the bioengineered virus is the cause, but even when the consensus in most of the world shifts to thinking it is, political action to ban it is nearly impossible because a few non-democratic regimes insist it's safe. Ten years later, 90% of the world's worms are gone and we're seeing famine of Biblical proportions.

This is, of course, a highly unlikely scenario in its specific details. But, the broad categories I think are plausible: An innovation with an unsuspected consequence spreads rapidly with catastrophic results, and political action to fight the threat is nearly impossible because the knowledge has spread to places without the proper checks and balances of the American and European systems. Here, companies might halt the manufacture of a dangerous substance even without waiting for government regulation because they fear the effects of lawsuits. (Though, there are certainly many products, such as tobacco, where this hasn't proven true.) And, due to patent laws, if the company that invented the technology shuts it down, it shuts down. But, in places like China where patent law is almost non-existant, and lawsuits against a harmful manufacturer unlikely, what are the checks and balances that will prevent irreparable environmental harm?

In my more optimistic moods, I think that the good forces of knowledge and innovation will always stay a few steps ahead of the risky forces of ignorance and complexity. Problems will arise, some created by our own cleverness, and we'll solve them, and move on to the next problem. It will be a never ending cycle of innovation that leads us to an ever more utopian future. But, the pessimist in me can't help but think that, while the good forces must maintain constant vigilance to show true improvement, the darker forces only need one victory to knock everything down. We need only slip up once on an global environmental threat to create world-wide famine and misery. The laws of unintended consequence are going to forever result in people of good intentions unleashing threats to the health, wealth, and peace of their fellow men.

If you want the utopia, don't sit back and assume others are going to build it. Stay educated, stay engaged, and stay vigilant. If enough of us do this, perhaps we'll have a long, happy run on this planet.

Under Construction

Whateverville is no more! For a long time, I've been worried that my blog title was too close to the title of science fiction author John Scalzi's much more popular blog "Whatever." I was unaware of his blog when I named my blog "Whateverville," and, since he probably gets 1000 hits for every 1 I get, I didn't want people to think I was trying to leach off his glory.

There is already at least one blog with the title "Jawbone of an Ass," but it updates only once every few months, so I doubt I'll be accused of trying to steal his readers.

Why "Jawbone of an Ass?" First, I like the image of Samson standing in the middle of 1000 philistines, smiting them with a donkey-bone. Occasionally on this blog, I rail against forces that outnumber me by an insane ratio. I write about atheism in the midst of a nation that thinks of itself as Christian. I write Liberterian manifestos in a nation where the Libertarian party routinely draws under 1% of the popular vote. I feel like the fabled lone voice crying in the wilderness. And yet... I still believe in the power of words. Despite much evidence to the contrary, I still hold out hope that words can change the world for the better. I may be surrounded by Philistines, but I intend to keep swinging.

Second, well, I can be something of an ass, and I like to use my jawbone. I don't go out of my way to be polite. I may occasionally use derogatory terms like "idiot," "inbred," and "Republican."

I'll be making several changes to this blog and soon to be announced companion blogs over the coming weeks. There's a lot of stuff I need to update. For the rest of the month, consider this site under construction.

Laura and the flowers

Last night I bought flowers. Today I'll drive out to the grave and leave them, in memory of the second anniversary of Laura's passing.

I bought tulips. They're red, but the edges of the blossom are wrinkled a bit and streaked with orange and yellow. None of the petals are perfect. Some are drooping out a bit too far, others are curled up a bit too tightly, as if they are shying away from thier breathren. One of the flowers has edges that have formed little spikey outgrowths. In size and shape, these spikey bits resemble a cat's claw, but yellow, with a red core. This one flower hasn't fully bloomed... it's still bound up tightly, more secretive than its vase-mates.

Laura wasn't perfect. She was assymetrical, wrinkled, and scarred. Life had left her with creases and dents, and more than a few spikey edges.

And I, I loved every square inch of her, from the tip of her sometimes bald head down to the bottoms of her toes. She was like a complex book that rewards your continued study, always revealing some new subtlety, some new hidden story. I cherished reading between her lines.

You'll know its love when the wrinkles become the reason. You'll know it's love when you trace the scars with your fingertips and remember the stories. You'll know it's love when you serenely fall into the flaws, and all the bumps and scuffs and ragged edges are more beautiful than a field of flowers.

Atom-huggers

Okay, in my last post I came out as a global warming skeptic. However, here's some good news for those of you who worry about our carbon emissions: we have a safe alternative that produces no greenhouse gasses.

I've been googling this evening trying to find the total percentage of American carbon dioxide output that comes from coal. Unfortunately, I'm finding wildly varied numbers--anything from 35% to 85%. I can't believe the internet is giving me fuzzy information!

Whatever the actual figures are, I can tell you this: your house has a bigger carbon footprint than your car. We think of electricity as "clean" energy. If you have an electric furnace and an electric water heater, stove, etc., you might feel pretty smug about the fact that your house has no chimney. In fact, though, most electricity in America is generated by burning coal, and the emissions from that coal equal far more carbon than is being put out by all the automobiles in the US. Again, I keep finding different numbers--as low as 9%, as high as 25%.

We can't all stop driving in the next decade. If we switch to electric cars that are recharged at home, we'll be pushing the pollution from a tailpipe to a smokestack, but if we're still burning coal, it does little in the long run to reduce CO2. And, even if we perfect the electric car, we aren't going to perfect an electric airplane anytime soon, and all those big trucks on the highway are still going to be rolling on diesel. Electric cars might make acceptable short range commuter vehicles, but we are a long ways away from having a battery that would propel an 18 wheeler five hundred miles on a charge.

Fortunately, oil has jumped to $120 a barrel and could go higher. (Fortunately if you believe in global warming, that is.) This means that price alone is going to change people's driving habits. And, I predict that as $4 gasoline sets in, you're going to see more and more cars in production that are real fuel sippers. The Honda Insight hybrid gets almost 70mpg. I predict we'll see a 100mpg commuter car hit the market within the next 5 years. Maybe that's overly optimistic, but right now you can count all your 50mpg choices on the fingers of one hand. Give it five years, and you'll need both hands and some of your toes, too.

So, higher fuel costs will eventually cut down carbon emissions from vehicles. But, as noted, this is, maybe, 25% of the problem. The big target has to be those coal powered plants that are currently the backbone of american electricity, and, thus, the backbone of our economy and our way of life.

The technology exists to shut down the last coal fueled powerplant within the next twenty years. We just need to get over our irrational fear of nuclear power plants.

A few posts back, I talked about American's inability to judge relative dangers. Nuclear power is one of the victims of irrational fears. Let me be blunt: Nuclear power isn't safe. People can die working in nuclear power plants. The nearby cities can be endangered by nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants produce dangerous wastes. However: Every one of these statements is equally true for our present coal-based energy generation. Far, far, far more people have died mining coal than have ever died from nuclear power. US department of labor statistics show about 50 people die a year in mining accidents. Many more people die each year from a disease known as "black lung." Burning coal produces polution that some people estimates contributes to 10,000 cancer deaths per year, though I'm skeptical of such a round number. Still, it's inarguable that coal based power plants push a lot of bad things into our atmosphere... and, if you think that carbon dioxide is one of those bad things, then the environmental cost of coal is almost immeasurable compared with the environmental cost of nuclear. Coal also has pollution effects beyond just burning it... mining it currently strips away whole mountains and is a major source of ground water pollution.

The number of deaths attributed to nuclear power plant failures in the US is pretty low. The worst nuclear accident ever in America, Three Mile Island, killed exactly zero people. Yes, there is risk with this. If we converted to a completely nuclear electric economy, and had 1000 nuclear plants online instead of 100, we'd be increasing the risk of eventual catastrophic failure. But, again, you have to weigh this against the known risks and dangers of coal. Currently, if you compare the pollution and risk footprints of the 100 nuclear plants in the US against the pollution and risk footprints of 100 coal plants generating a similar amount of power, I believe you'd find that nuclear is the most responsible choice we can make for the environment.

As for waste, yes, nuclear waste has special challenges. There is a NIMBY response to its disposal. But, if you are a believer in man-made global warming, then you have to be more afraid of coal than nuclear. Nuclear power isn't going to make the oceans rise 30 feet. Carbon... maybe. I doubt it. But everything is a trade off of risks.

By the way, for proponents of wind and solar: Yes. Go for it. If you live in Arizona, solar may well be a better option than nuclear. If you live near an ocean or someplace that generates a lot of wind, put up the windmills. A windmill in my immediate vicinity would be mostly decoration... there's just not that much wind here. Solar panels are fine. We can cover the roofs of our nuclear power plants with them, but the technology isn't there today to have it completely replace coal. Nuclear power is ready. It's been ready for decades. It can save the world from coal, if we just have the good sense to use it.

Environmentalists are frequently called tree-huggers. Count me in the ranks of the atom huggers. I believe in power of the atom, by the atom, for the atom (at least when those atoms are arranged into the shape of me).

What would it take to make me change my mind?

I was at Ravencon in Richmond, Va on Friday and Saturday. It's a great con. Very well organized, good attendance, and I thought the panels had interesting topics. There were plenty of actual science panels to go with the writing panels and gaming panels, etc. As a science fiction writer, and a science geek in general, I like being in the company of people who know what they are talking about.

On Friday, I moderated a panel on Global Warming. I went into the panel well prepared to make my argument that the case for man-made global warming isn't the slam-dunk, no further arguement needed conclusion presented by folks like Al Gore. I anticipated being a lone voice of dissent on the panel, so I tried to gather as much data as possible before going into the room. Instead, out of about 30 folks in the room, it turned out that fewer than five thought that man-made global warming was a reality.

I was actually somewhat bothered by this. Anytime I find myself on the side of a majority opinion, an instinct kicks in that makes me start questioning my own beliefs. And, beliefs is the operative word here.

One of the panelists who doubted global warming kept referring to scientists she knew who thought that man-made global warming was BS, so, ergo, it was BS. But, while I like talking to experts, I dislike relying on faith in experts as a foundation for my beliefs. To me, this is more faith than reason. Plus, it leads to the standard media "news" treatment of dueling experts. "My authorities are better than your authorities" begins to pass as reasoned debate. People no longer listen to evidence--they listen to "leaders," and this strikes me as a risky way to run a world.

I'm human. I have limited time and limited resources with which to judge the world. On a lot of important issues, it really isn't reason that guides me, but gut. I suspect the same is true of most people, and I don't find this a particularly bad human trait, as long as people retain the ability to listen to reason when they hear it, and follow reason instead of thier guts if needed. Over the years, I've found that I keep asking myself one simple question about my beliefs. As long as I know the answer to it, I feel that my beliefs are reasonably ones for me to hold; I'm not just being dogmatic to believe in evolution, or libertarianism, or whatever.

That question is: What evidence would convince me that I'm wrong?

As long as you are open to evidence that your beliefs are wrong, then you know you've still got a sliver of reason guiding your guts.

So, if you believe in God, what evidence would it take for you to believe that you are wrong?

If you don't believe in God, what evidence would you need to see to doubt that you were right?

If you believe in global warming, what evidence would make you think that the theory didn't have merit?

If you don't believe in global warming, what would it take to convince you that it's real?

Here are a few of my core beliefs. Here's what evidence I could encounter that would make me pretty sure I'd been wrong:

1. Atheism. This is simple: If I were to witness the rapture, I'd just sigh and say, "Well, I called that one wrong."

2. Evolution. This is also pretty easy: If we were to discover, clearly, repeatedly and predictably, human fossils through all geologic strata, then I think there's be a good case that humans were seperate creations from the rest of the world's biology.

3. Global Warming. This is a tough one, alas. I don't think you could gather enough data over a human lifespan to genuinely document a cause and effect relationship between the current warming trends and human emissions. You would need centuries of hard data; right now, the numbers before the last few decades are somewhat muddy. We're documenting changes of tenths of a degree. Today, we have thousands, if not millions, off hard data points from all over the globe, measured with digital instruments that are accurate and calibrated against all the other instruments. Unfortunately, we are comparing our increasingly precise numbers against data that was gathered for much of the last century by somebody looking out a window at a red-line on a thermometer and writing down the number it showed.

Still, I can think of one thing that could persuade me: As we get better data from Mars, if we were to document a multi-decade cooling trend there, or even temperature stability, while at the same time documenting a warming trend here on earth, then you could make the case that the warming isn't due to natural flucuations in the sun. Right now, though, Mars is showing a warming trend as earth is showing a warming trend. Of course, again, the data for Mars for more than a few decades isn't great data. Still, if I must form an opinion on this in my life time, then that seems like a good starting point. If Mars cools or remains stable between now and 2020, and earth warms over the same time span, then I think I'd swing over to believing in global warming.

Anti-Libertarian Propaganda???

I recently read a column on Snope.com where the "real" libertarian agenda was published. I did some googling, and as near as I can tell, it started as a blog post at Caleb's Column. You can read the original post here.

A few highlights of the evil libertarian agenda:

1. Replace public schools, which are required to be somewhat religiously and politically neutral, with right-wing Christian fundamentalist academies which indoctrinate students with ultra-right ideology, and are run to make profits.

5. Remove all social programs which aid the poor, including Social Security, Medicare, Workplace Health and Safety, Unemployment Insurance, Drug Treatment Programs, Student Loans, and the Department of Labor.

12. Rewrite history to make Communism worse than Fascism.

16. Rewrite history to make Senator Joe Mccarthy into a great American hero.

17. Remove all public knowledge that Socialism and Communism ever had a mass following in the United States. “Who controls the present, controls of the past.”

I must confess, as a person who has vote with the Libertarian party for the last 20 years, and as a hard-core atheist, I was somewhat shocked to discover I'd been working all these years to push kids into right-wing, Christian Fundamentalist schools. That wasn't in my indocrination kit at all! Well, I'm tearing up my member card right now, boy, I tell you what.

Or, maybe not.

My first reaction was to argue with this article post by post. Some of these agenda items actually sound like good ideas to me though. I would love to see cuts in social security and medicaire... those are a big part of the reason we are currently a debtor nation to the tune of 10 trillion dollars. If fairness, I want to cut defense spending as well, and whatever trivial percentage of our budget is currently being spent on the War on Drugs, or in trying to catch governors spending their own dough on prostitutes. Other items in the post seem strange... I'm not sure one needs to rewrite history to make communism worse than fascism. On sheer bodycount, the commies win. But, "worse" is such a strange qualifier here. It's like saying that lung cancer is worse than stomach cancer. Can't we just agree to lump it into the list of things that suck, and move on? It's not like any libertarian I know thinks that fascism was the way to go.

The last two items I listed because they seem so contradictory. If libertarians are engaged in an effort to puff up Joe McCartney (???), then wouldn't we want to promote that he was right, and that we were absolutely overrun with internal commies, since this was his big claim to fame? And, of course there were once big communist and socialist movements... most libertarians will tell you they still are, they just relabeled themselves as democrats and republicans.

But, the most mysterious thing about the column to me is, really, why bother to slander libertarians? There is no chance in the world we're going to take over congress or the presidency any time soon. You don't need to misrepresent our ideas to have people reject us... people reject our actual ideas without much prodding, thank you very much. And, since he's framing this as a libertarian/communist dichotomy, I would point out that libertarians have never really held power anywhere in the world, while commies have controlled about 1/3 of the world's population. It just seems like a very strange thing to view libertarians as a threat to the great historical march of Marxism.

I might also do some yardwork...

Pale morning clouds mute the lighting
on a fresh Saturday fit for writing.
I'll labor all day,
just typing away,
on scenes where my dragons are fighting.

Debate Debates

I didn't watch the debate between Obama and Clinton the other night, but I've heard Obama whining about the "gotcha" nature of the questions. I've got two gut reactions to this.

First, Obama has forfeited all right to complain about a tough press, in my opinion. Obama has been treated for the most part as if he's the second coming of Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan combined, the most talented politician to have emerged in America since the founding fathers. He's been running on fluff, talking about hope, working together, changing the world, etc. He does have positions and policies, but these are distributed through his website, they aren't the stuff of speeches or debates.

For the most part, media reports about Obama resemble celebrity gossip. Even the stuff he's getting smacked around on now is gossipy--did you hear what he said? Did you hear what his friend's said? He's risen to where he is mostly on chatter and charm; unfortunately, if chatter lifts you up, it can also drop you. It's especially dangerous for Obama because his resume is so thin. When negative stories hit McCain, McCain has a track record of decades in the senate that he can point to as evidence of who he is and what he does. He's shown a willingness to take stands unpopular with fellow republicans and, on the matter of the war, with pretty much everyone. No one agrees with him on everything, but it's not important, because, agree or not, he's clearly demonstrated that he's someone who puts some thought into his opinions and goes with what he thinks and feels, not with what is most politically convenient. Obama's most famous vote is one he never made--he didn't vote for the war, but since he wasn't in the senate at the time, we'll never know how he would have behaved if he'd actually been put on the spot. And aside from that non-vote... what else? Where are the bills with his name on them? Where are the instances where he took a stand against his own base and voted in a way that showed any political courage at all? If Obama want's to run on a substance free platform, he can't gripe about substance free debate questions.

My second reaction to Obama's complaints, though, are that he's absolutely right. As something of a political junkie, I stay at least vaguely aware of what questions are getting asked in debates, and, for the most part, this entire campaign has been almost entirely information free. The questions, again, have a high school popularity contest feel to them. Candidates for the presidency deserve better questions than, "Do you think people like you?"

My favorite question of all the debates was the one on whether illegal aliens should be given driver's licenses. It's a good question because there isn't a clear cut, easy answer that will make everyone happy. No is a good answer, because, what part of illegal don't you understand? If an illegal alien walks into a DMV and applies for a license, why not slap handcuffs on him instead of taking his picture? But, yes is also a good answer. Illegal aliens are here. They are a part of our economy. And, they're driving. Encouraging them to have driver's licenses deals with a pragmatic reality... they are on the roads anyway, they should at least prove to a beaurocrat somewhere that they know what a stop light means and how to parallel park. Clinton got chewed up by basically answering with both the pros and cons and then not saying what her position was. She was evasive. But, you know what? While it was my favorite question of the debate, it was also one that a presidential candidate really didn't need to have thought about in great detail because the federal government doesn't issue driver's licenses. Still, I liked that she at least showed an awareness of all sides of the argument.

Obama has hinted he's not going to do a debate in North Carolina. I hope he changes his mind. If it will help, I'll offer to moderate. I'll even give my questions in advance:

1. Do you know what the current federal debt is? (Rounding off to the nearest trillion is acceptable.) Do you regard the debt as a problem to be tackled by the next administration, or as one that can safely be left for future generations to deal with? Is a debt free America a realistic goal? If not, what would your target be for the debt load of America, as expressed as a percentage of GDP?

2. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Should this be a guiding principal of American imigration policy? Or is this mearly a quaint 19th century platitude that must give way to a 21rst century policy of giving preference to the energetic, successful, well-educated elites of other countries who come here to drive our high-tech industries? Should the Statue of Liberty's text be replaced with an H-1 visa? And, do you feel our current imigration targets are well calibrated, or should we be allowing more legal imigrants? Less? Should the number be doubled? Halved?

3. Do you know how many countries US armed forces are currently stationed in? How many countries do you perceive as potential military threats to American's on American soil? Do you feel that a military presense in Europe, Asia, South America, the Pacific, the Middle East, etc., has done anything over the last fifteen years to make American's safer? How many nuclear bombs do you feel American must possess in order to maintain an effective deterrent? What is your position of testing these nuclear weapons? What is your position on a military presence in orbit?

4. Do you feel prayer is a legitimate approach to problem solving? You've both (Obama and Clinton) spoke of feeling the guiding presence of the holy spirit in your lives. Would you follow the guidance of that holy spirit in crafting foreign policy? Social policy? Economic policy? Would you feel comfortable appointing a catholic to the supreme court? A jew? A muslim? A scientologist? An atheist?

5. Of current the supreme court justices, are there any you feel you agree with more often than others? Are there any you feel have a fundamental misunderstanding of the constitution? If so, what would that misunderstanding be?

6. If oil remains above $100 a barrel, do you foresee any potential benefits? Do you feel the government should have a role in determining the price of commodities (as is already done for a lot of agricultural products) such as oil, drugs, and houses? Are there any products that you feel the government should never regulate in price, but should always be left to the whims of the free market?

7. Do you feel, twenty years after it was declared, that the war on drugs has been a success? What stratedgies and tactics would you alter should you continue the war? Would you be willing to continue the war for 100 years if neccessary?

Other questions are popping to mind, but this will do for now. If Clinton or Obama give me a call about moderating, I'll be sure to let y'all know.

The Ten Trillion Pound Gorilla

Sometimes, I'll be listening to NPR talking about the political supression that goes on in other countries. The Russians, for instance, have horrible supression because Putin's party keeps all but a half dozen minor parties off the ballot. In Iran, all the candidates must meet the approval of the all powerful mullahs. In Egypt, candidates who are "radical" are disqualified from appearing on the ballot. And NPR reports that the citizens of these countries still support the ruling parties, and speculate it's because the media is controlled by the government. NPR. A news media created by an act of congress, is decrying state run media.

Which of these conditions isn't true, at least in parallel, in the US? Can you imagine going into a voting booth and having SIX parties to choose from? Here, the religious mullah's may not select the candidates (though some would argue that James Dobson and Pat Robertson certainly try), but the media mullahs decide early on who the serious candidates are and who the jokes will be and shape the race by reporting on it as a popularity contest. Money mullahs also have their say, though this time I was pleased to see that, on the republican side at least, money didn't prove to be the decisive factor. As far as disqualifying candidates from the ballot, I'm currently listed as "unafilliated" because the Libertarian party was decertified for failing to get 10% of the vote. But, why should any party or candidate get decertified? It's an electronic ballot these days. Does it seriously take that much more electricity to put ten candidates on the screen instead of two? The reality is that powerful people decide in advance who we get to vote for, and our choices wind up between corporate approved candidate A and corporate approved candidate B.

I mentioned that the election is reported as a popularity contest. It has to be--the differences in the issues between the "mainstream" candidates is trivial. They squabble around the edges on the nuances of who is more opposed to gay marriage, or illegal immigrants, or whether we should be using military might in Iraq, or whether we should have gone into Pakistan to get Bin Ladin. Our elections hinge on whether someone has a nervous laugh, or is too old, or attends church with a bigot. It's like we never get past the voting patterns of our high school class presidents. The candidates there might take a position on school lunches or allocation of parking spaces, but everyone knew they would have no genuine power to change things, and the election was going to come down to who was the most likable.

So, the election is going to come down to McCain and, probably, Obama. Neither of them has ever uttered a word about the biggest threat that America faces. They aren't going to. None of the mainstream candidates are going to. Because you can't get elected if you talk about the truth in America.

There's a ten trillion pound gorilla hanging off the great American skyscraper, and everyone is acting like they don't see it.

I'm talking about the Federal debt. Not the budget deficit, though this is related. The deficit is how much we're falling short each year in our tax collection versus our spending. The debt is how much we owe, and currently it's closing in on $10,000,000,000. Ten trillion.

Currently, we collect about 2.5 trillion a year in taxes. So, if we shut down the Federal government... we don't pay any federal employee salaries, we pay no social security, we leave our tanks sitting out in the desert and have our forces hitchhike home... and we still would need four years before we were out from under this debt.

Four years might not sound so bad, but the reality is that we aren't going to shut down the government. We're going to keep growing it. The interest on 10 trillion dollars ads up rather quickly. It's turned into a national reverse savings account. Since we run budget deficits, we are continuing to borrow money just to pay the interest payments on the debt. We've become a country that's akin to a household using its credit cards to pay its mortgage. If you were a financial counselor who saw a family doing this, you'd recognize that family was in a serious financial death spiral.

And you know all those billions we're spending "off book" to protect America by fighting a pre-emptive war? Well, if we went to war with China, or Saudi Arabia, they wouldn't need a single tank or bomb to bring us to our knees. They could just do nothing, and stop funding our debt. The real WMD's of the future won't be nuclear or biological, but financial.

You can look around at the supposed prosperity growth of America in the last twenty years, but we're more akin to the overdrawn families living in McMansions who've been living the good life by borrowing until they can't borrow any more. Then, someone loses a job, or an interest rate rises a point, or gas goes up a dollar a gallon in a year, and the whole facade comes crumbling down.

The longer we ignore the problem, the more difficult it will be to solve. And I worry we'll never, ever elect the people who would have the courage to solve it. To get back in the black, we have to do two things: Increase taxes and decrease services. Curiously, I don't notice any candidate running on that slogan.

Some modest proposals for increasing taxes: First, reinstate the estate tax at a newly draconian level. At heart, I'm a libertarian, opposed to taxing people just because they are wealthy. But, you know, sacrifices must be made. We're going for a decade with the estate tax slowly dwindling down to zero. The year you die is going to effect how much your family gets to keep--the longer you hold on, the better for them. So, why not keep this "changes by the year" philosophy, only instead of it going down, we spin a wheel January 1 to figure out the death tax amount for the year? And the wheel can have a lot of 100% slots and almost no 0% slots.

Second, we could have a "too much fame" tax. We could have a vote each year of the celebrities we're most tired of hearing about. Then, we'd just go and grab everything from the top ten folks on that list. Britney would be too broke to afford her brazilian waxes after a few votes. Rush Limbaugh could no longer afford to hire a housekeeper to score hillbilly heroin from. If you're a baseball player caught up in a steriod scandal at the same time you're closing in on a home run record, well, you'd better hope there are ten people more loathed than you are this year. If you do manage to get rich, you'd learn to keep your head low. The new rule would be, you can be famous, or you can be rich, but it's dangerous to have too much of both.

Cutting services: Step one, let's get rid of the military. Honestly, I have nothing against our soldiers. They've done a fine job. But, do we really need troops in a hundred different nations? In theory, the purpose of our "defense" forces should be just that... defending our borders. Making sure no hostile nation comes onto our shores and tries to grab, I dunno, whatever it is we make here in America. Our iced coffee drinks, perhaps. But we could do this with a much, much, much tinier military than we presently have. We just need to keep 50 nukes. Or even just say we're keeping 50 nukes, and we're not showing them to anyone, or saying where they're pointed. But, Portugal, if you mess with us... well, just don't is all.

As for our immediate borders, well, gee, the INS and border patrol are doing a bang-up job aren't they? I bet no more than a few dozen people slip over the border each year. What? How many? Oh dear. So I have an alternative to the current border patrol. We make it all volunteer. We ask patriotic American's to come on out to the borders and serve a week or two at a time patrolling. In return, they get to ride around in armed pick-up trucks and fire machine guns into the air while drinking beer. No terrorist in his right mind is going to face off against that. Mexican's (and the occasional Canadian) can sneak through now knowing that if they're caught it will be by professionals who will treat them respectfully and escort them back out of the country. With the drunken gun-toting volunteer force, who wants to chance it?

For the oceans, the deal would be similar, only it would be armed speed boats. Honestly, with the right recruiting posters, we not only wouldn't have to pay the volunteers, we could charge them a thousand bucks a week, and we'd still have all the manpower we need.

Obviously, my modest proposals aren't serious approaches to dealing with our problems. And yet, they are better proposals than anything I've heard from McCain or Obama or Clinton. They aren't talking about the debt because their fingerprints are on the credit cards. We were once the wealthiest nation on earth but both Republicans and Democrats have colluded to manage our finances in a way that would make even MC Hammer's business managers blush.

And, in fairness, while ten trillion dollars is a big number... trillions are normally not often encountered outside of discussions of astrophysics... the US economy is a creature of big numbers. Our gross domestic product is roughly 14 trillion. We owe a lot of money, but if we had to pay this debt, in theory it's not too late. But after 8 more years of a president who just doesn't talk about the problem? Where is the tipping point? If we don't take it seriously now, then when?

A Blogger's Question

Some no doubt wonder
Why's he stuck on these hiaku?
A blow to the head?

Well, no. To be honest, was writing an email last Sunday morning and noticed that a sentence I had just written had a hiaku rhythm,* starting and ending with a 5 syllable phrase. I went ahead an altered it to be a hiaku in that email, then wrote a hiaku about writing that hiaku to post on my blog. Since that hiaku ended with the line "I should put on pants," I had several people over at the Codex board write humorous hiaku responses about the horror and/or inspiration of me sitting around naked writing poetry. I would like to state that, for the record, I wasn't naked. I was in my underwear.

At a Starbucks.

Anyway, the hiaku have helped me set a personal record for this blog: I actually have at least one post a day. Admittedly, they aren't long posts. But, hopefully one or two raised a grin, and they fit into one of the topics I frequently blog about, musing about the writing life.

If I could, I'd write 1000 word articles every day. I like meaty, though-provoking posts. But, I really don't know that I have seven meaty, thought-provoking ideas a week. Probably I have something closer to one per week.

So, as a blogger, I have a question: Do readers actually enjoy these frequent mini-posts? Something fresh every day even if it's little more words than a fortune cookie fortune? Or do you mind waiting waiting a week for the longer, more chunky posts?

Also, does anyone have any strong opinions about the content? I would say that over the years, I've drifted into writing three main types of articles.

1. Practical writing advice.
2. Political rants and/or religious rants.
3. Stories of my personal history.

I also write articles about writing and promoting Bitterwood, Dragonforge, and Dragonseed, but I post these over at Bitterwoodnovel.blogspot.com.

So, does anyone absolutely hate that I waste my time writing one of the categories of articles listed above? Is there a type of article that you browse over here hoping to find? I seem to get the most links from other blogs when I write about writing. I get the most comments on a post when I write about my personal history. And I get the most emails when I write about religion and politics.

Currently, I write about just about anything that interest me. Even then, I edit the material I post here. The lives of my friends interest me more than politics, but I wouldn't post an article about them because I respect other people's privacy. Griping about my day job produces most of my verbal rants in real life, but I don't gripe about work here because I suspect most people would find it whiney and boring... and whiney and boring is something I only inflict on my closest friends! And, as a man, I would say that sex is right up at the top of the list of things that interest me, but I don't talk about sex here because it would be crass.

The point is, I already select the sort of stuff I write about from a much larger pool of things that interest me. Should I narrow my selection further? Or just carry one with the current mish-mash of topics?

*Rhythm is, like, the ultimate weapon if you're playing Hangman against an unsuspecting foe. They burn through all five vowels instantly, and are left with only two strikes. Really proficient players will instantly deduce rhythm once the vowels are gone, but less experienced players usually guess the "y" next, then strike again by guessing an "s", and then usually crash and burn guessing something really random, like a "w."

Saturday's Promise

Just after midnight
on a Saturday morning
ripe with potential

Friday's Agenda

bang out a chapter
then have a margarita
big as a fishbowl

Thursday's lament

Up at 4:30
Nothing written yesterday
save one sad hiaku

Wednesday Calling

Ah! The temptation!
To call in sick and stay home...
Here there be dragons!

Tuesday's Zombie

up till two A.M.
groping for one thousand words
makes a rough Tuesday

Why I'm not afraid of Muslims (or Christians, or Atheists, for that matter)

I wrote this rather long response in the comments section in the Darwn Fish post I made over the weekend. I'm modifying it slightly to make it its own post. I got bugged last week when I read an article saying that people who posted Darwin Fish on thier cars were narrowminded, bigoted cowards. The argument ran that we atheist aren't afraid to parody Christians, but we don't dare speak out against Muslims because we'd get our heads chopped off.

The main reason I'm more vocal against Christianity than Islam is simply a matter of personal experience. In my life, I've known hundreds, if not thousands, of Christians. I can count the number of Muslims I personally know on the fingers of one hand. If I scan my AM dial, I find several stations of preaching and gospel music. No hint of the Muslim faith can be found except maybe Cat Stevens playing on an oldies station.

I don't have any actual numbers to back this up, but, world-wide, I'm guessing that if you are the victim of a beheading, you are statistically likely to have been killed by a Muslim. And, world-wide, Muslims do seem responsible for a high percentage of terrorists acts. They aren't exclusively responsible, mind you, but still, if I heard about a bomb going off in a major metropolitan area tomorrow, I'd immediately suspect a Muslim was behind it, unless it turned out to be doctor's office, in which case I'd suspect an anti-abortion wacko, or a medical lab, in which case I'd suspect an animal rights nut. And, when Muslim fundamentalists get thier fingers into the governance of a country, that country is pretty much screwed. Stonings, beheadings, hand-choppings, and the horrible degredation of women become the law of the land... trust me, I don't want fundamentalist Islam holding any power at all in American politics. I'm deeply grateful for a constitution that prevents this.

That said, I just cannot see any plausible way that Muslims are a serious threat to the American way of life. This isn't to say they are NO threat. They simply aren't in the top ten threats to life, maybe not even in the top 100. Chalking up every single American death in the Iraq war to the actions of a Muslim fundie, that means in a 10 year period, Islamic terrorists have managed to kill about 8,000Americans.

In that same time frame, 430,000 American's died in auto accidents. 280,000 were killed by guns. 38,000 American's drowned. The general couch-potato, fast-food lifestyle of American's contributed to about 9 million heart failures in this time span. 650,000 people died of the flu. The flu! The flu is 80 times more likely to kill you than a Muslim terrorist if you're an American. The airwaves are full of people who think it's a good idea to spend a trillion dollars on a war to fight Islamic terrorists. No one is advocating for spending a billion dollars to make certain everyone single American gets a flu shot. (I'm not either, by the way.)

Americans seem to have no capacity at all to weigh risks and design appropriate responses. Large chunks of my fellow citizens are so terrified of the invading Muslim hordes they support torture, indefinite detention without charges, and generally bombing the crap out of people who share the faith of the 50 or so Muslims in America who've ever committed a terrorist act.

There are 8 million Muslims living in America. So far, the known terrorist conversion rate here is roughly 50 to 8,000,000, or about 1 out of every 160,000. Let's assume that there are sleeper cells, though, who are waiting to kill us and quadruple that number, to one out of every 40,000.

Somewhere out in America, 200 Muslims are going to sleep tonight with murder, mayhem, and carnage on thier minds. Frightened? That's 4 per state. Draw a hundred mile circle around you... are there any Islamic terrorists in that radius? Maybe. If you live in certain areas, bump the maybe into probably, even certainly. Scared yet?

Compare this number to the number of all Americans who commit murders each year--roughly 1 person in 20,000 is going to kill somebody. Assuming that murderers as a whole reflect society as a whole, then more than half of US murders are performed by people who self identify as Christian. This means that about 1 in 40,000 Christians are murderers--so, there are quite possibly 3750 Christians among us who are thinking of killing somebody tonight. Your odds of living within 100 miles of one of them is quite good. Just keep watching your local papers.

(If the notion that 50% of murderers would think of themselves as Christian strikes you as absurd, I'll direct you to these 10 year old statistics of religious affiliations of inmates in federal prisons... these number aren't, alas, broken down by crime, so I don't know how many of these are murderers and how many are in for tax evasion, or child porn, or whatever. But, 10 years ago, 84% of prisoners identified themselves as Christian. Read the numbers here. )

Obviously, I'm pushing these numbers to the point of absurdity. But, if you get murdered in the US, you are inarguably more likely to be killed by a person who was raised in the Christian faith than in the Muslim faith. A sense of perspective is required.

I would much rather live in a nation that's 50% Christian than 50% Muslim. I'm not trying to make the argument above that Christian's are dangerous; 39,999 out of 40,000 of them aren't murderers, after all. I work side by side with Christians. My whole family is Christian other than myself. I like Christians! It's just thier beliefs that drive me bonkers. But, the beliefs of many of my fellow atheists drive me bonkers as well. Christopher Hitchens, after all, believes in the Muslim threat and supports the Iraq war. A whole lot of atheists I know are also liberals, and seem to drink the kool-aid on every liberal cause that comes down the pike. I know so many who call themselves "freethinkers" who are anything but.

On the whole, though, I'm not terribly worried about any ideology killing me. I'm much more worried about the flu, and my worry level for that is somewhere down near the bottom of the list of stuff that keeps me awake at night.

I just can't get worked up about this grand muslim assault on our freedoms that the right-wingers keep jabbering about. The terrorist muslim in our midst strikes me as an overhyped hobgoblin, designed to frighten and distract us from the larger problems we could be tackling.

Monday Morning

Monday morning blah
I'd rather stay home writing
if only it paid

sunday morning author hiaku

chill april morning
drowsy fingers tap the keys
I should put on pants

Darwin Fish

I recently read an article at real clear politics where the author denounced Darwin Fish as a form of religious bigotry. You can read the article here. The author, Jonah Goldberg, basically says that displaying a Darwin Fish is an offensive, intolerant action, a PC form of bigotry. And, on top of all that, it's cowardly. He concludes by writing:

The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.

His point being that the Darwin Fishers aren't afraid to poke fun at Christians, but don't dare poke fun at Muslims because we're afraid of getting killed.

His argument bugged me on several different levels.

1. It doesn't seem to understand the nature of parody. The Darwin Fish is funny only because the Christian Fish is a very, very popular plastic symbol for people to affix to their trunk. Really, it's almost the only game in town. In 30 years of driving, I've never once seen a star of david or a crescent moon and star affixed to the trunk of a car. Nor have I seen a little plastic Buddha, or whatever the hell a Scientologist might display. (A little UFO over a volcano?) The Darwin Fish only works because it's poking fun of something that's instantly recognized. I doubt most Americans would even recognize a symbol of Islam, let alone the parody of it. You can make a lot of money selling plastic fish in America. You can make a little less money, but still turn a profit, making darwin fish. But once you get much past that, the economics of the situation just falls off.

2. In the hundred posts that followed this article, a significant number were from Christians who testified, yes brother! that they took offense whenever they saw a Darwin Fish. I don't know the intricacies of copyright law that would allow me to cut and paste whole comments here, but you can read them under the article link above. Darwin Fishers are accused of attempting to "tear down society" and "demean humanity." To which, I must respond, What the hell? We're talking about putting a pit of plastic on the trunk of your car! I suspect society, and humanity for that matter, may endure. So, to all the people who may be offended by the Darwin Fish, I would advise you to learn some good anger managment techniques. Some people turn to prayer to handle these feelings, or so I'm told.

3. It was also implied that the Darwin Fish is displayed primarily to insult Christians. I used to display them; I went through three, in fact. They kept getting torn off my trunk and broken... I think the commandment to vandalize other peoples car symbols might be in Deuteronomy. But, the whole reason I displayed it was because the first time I saw one, I grinned. I really didn't stick it on thinking, "Man, this will humiliate and demean those Jesus fishers!" If Christian's got to display the logo of their team, why shouldn't I display mine?

4. Isn't there a commandment against making a graven image that looks like an animal (this is a retorical question... it's right there in those ten commandments that people are always jabbering about). Arguably, the Jesus Fishers are defying their own holy book by showing the symbol. But, this doesn't bother me, obviously. Still, if you turn your faith into a bumper sticker, it seems to me that it deserves all the solemn respect due any other bumper sticker.

Finally, on about a dozen of the responses, there was a theme that said, "You're only making fun of Christians because Muslims would kill you if you made fun of them." And, it finally hit me what underlay all this anger: Jealousy. Somehow, this tiny subset of Christians are sitting around seething because they don't get any respect. They think, "Boy, if we were more like those Muslims, rioting and beheading in response to cartoons, then no one would mess with us!"

Luckily, I'm pretty sure this represents a fairly tiny minority among the larger Christian population. Still, if you're filled with anger over the Darwin Fish, you're in luck: They make a trunk logo that shows a Jesus Fish swallowing a Darwin Fish. Go buy one and stick it on the back of your car. Then, if I get stuck in traffic behind you, it will be my turn to stew in bile and rage as I stare at this stunning denunciation of my beliefs, set eternally in plastic.

Or not.