You Can Dish It Out, But...

I don't know whether to file this under the rantings of a sore loser, the irony of someone that only applies rules and standards to the other side, or just someone that can dish it out, but can't take it.

Go to http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2009/01/palin_crazy_or_crazy_like_a_fo.html?hpid=sec-politics to see some excerpts of the interviews that comprise a new documentary. The film clips have www.HowObamaGotElected.com across them and consist of Sarah Palin being interviewed for the documentary. I listened to the clip with a combination of amusement, disbelief, and scorn.

She was still mad about the Katie Couric interview, when she was asked what news sources she reads, what newspapers and magazines. She claimed that this was a stupid gotcha question and wants to know if Caroline Kennedy would be asked tough questions. "What do you read" is a tough question? Maybe, if you don't read anything and don't want to admit it and look like an idiot. They should have asked her what she thinks about most of the time. That would have been an interesting question to hear her stumble around, unable to answer. Think? Who has time to think when you're out speechifyin'?

She asked "Why do reporters not check on facts?" Like your conservative friends, Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh? Like you when you started attacking Barack Obama for "palin' around with terrorists"?

She asked, "When did we start accepting as hard news sources, bloggers?" Like the Drudge Report? She continues, "It's a sad state of affairs when media relies on bloggers ... for their hard news information." I'm not sure which mainstream media outlets rely on bloggers to provide information, but I do know that a prominent conservative book that came out just before the election was sourced mostly from discredited blog accounts.

She said, "What is the double standard here why people would choose to believe lies, and reporters especially, not just takin' one extra step to get to the facts and report the facts, but instead continue to spread things that are not true." But you didn't hear anyone on the right disputing the obvious lie that Obama was a Muslim.

She questions if her perceived mistreatment by the media is political or sexism: "What is it that drives some people to believe the worst and perpetuate, the worst, in terms of gossip, lies" (Like charges that Obama is a Muslim, or pals around with terrorists, or must be condemned for the words of his pastor?)

She noted that Barack Obama said that family was off limits, and she respectfully believed that this applied to everyone. She claimed that recent "attacks" on her family (like reporting that her high school dropout daughter that conceived a child out of wedlock dropped out of high school and conceived a child out of wedlock) by the media violated some rule that Obama supposedly put into place. Suddenly, this great rule that she violated at will was lamented when it didn't apply to her. Apparently, she forgot the attacks on Michelle Obama for the "I'm finally proud of my country" statement.

Said that she asked the media to correct the report that her daughter and son-in-law are high school dropouts. I'm not sure what correction is possible, given that her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend dropped out of high school when she got pregnant. Granted, her daughter is taking correspondence courses to get a high school degree, which is not necessary or possible if you stay in high school and don't drop out. So the media is not being inaccurate in saying that she dropped out of high school, just incomplete in not saying that she is going to complete her degree out of high school. It's kind of like when you say that someone's pastor makes inflammatory remarks, and conveniently forget to mention that he condemned what the pastor said.

Palin commented on the Katy Couric interview, saying that "after it didn't go well the first day, why were we going to go back for more?" So it's the McCain campaign's fault for subjecting you to interviews, not your fault for failing miserably in them?

She also complained about Tina Fey's portrayals of her on Saturday Night Live, but then went and appeared on the show. I'm sure at the time that it was calculated to make her look cool, like she was a good sport. You lose the good sport points if you later complain about those mean people making fun of you.

She complained that people were capitalizing on and exploiting her position. Isn't that what she attempted to do when she stumped for McCain?

She asked how Caroline Kennedy will be handled, and if she will be handled with kid gloves. If asking questions is the opposite of being treated with kid gloves, I would hope Caroline Kennedy will be subjected to the same treatment as Sarah Palin. I wonder if she'll stumble on being asked what magazines and newspapers she read, or if she'll draw a blank when asked about any Supreme Court decisions that she disagrees with.

She talked about the hypocrisy of the media because they attack her for being conservative. I don't think anyone attacked her for being conservative. I think they attacked her for being a hypocrite and an idiot. But it's perfectly OK for anyone in the right wing loudmouth talk radio or Fox News world to accuse and attack people for being liberal.

She implored us, "Don't get sucked into believing what too many in the "main stream media" would want you to believe." Just stick to Hannity, O'Reilly, and Limbaugh, and you'll be fine, America.

The Demise of Newsprint

I subscribe to a print version of the Kansas City Star and it gets delivered to my driveway every day. My father did it all my life, and I kept it up without thinking about it much. The average age of the people in my neighborhood is older than me, and there is still a newspaper on every driveway in the morning.

Are we dinosaurs? I know that with the Internet, there is a world of news out there, freely available at the click of a button. I know that the gas to deliver the newspaper to me and the paper used to print the newspaper are not the best choices environmentally. I keep doing it mostly through habit, but there are some reasons why it's really nice to have a paper newspaper.

The chief reason is portability. I love having a paper when I fly on an airplane because you have to keep your laptop off and don't have an Internet connection in a plane anyway. Sometimes it's nice to take the paper out on the porch, over to the easy chair, or into the bathroom (sorry! but it's true). It's nice to pull out a pen or pencil and do the crossword puzzle.

You can also browse a newspaper better than an online article. When you want to know what's going on in the world, you have no idea what that might be, or you wouldn't need a newspaper. It's good to flip through and see if anything interests you. Online, someone is telling you what is important, and you're offered some of their choices of what you might need to know. One of my most annoying revelations was when I found out that the AOL newsfeed had the exact same headlines that the gossip mags have in the checkout line of the grocery store.

I do like the idea that the people that write for a newspaper are accountable for its content. I still don't feel that is true for the online alternatives. Do those people even check their facts, research sources, or worry about someone pointing out that they got it all wrong? Plus, the instantaneous nature of online access, along with what I usually see on the online news story feeds, leads me to believe that impatient shallow minded browsing is the norm for that form. If you want to know it in depth and take it all in, you're better off going for the print on paper.

I also like the size of a page and how you can take it all in at a glance in a newspaper, versus the annoying paging down you have to do on a computer screen. In a newspaper, you know what you're getting into as far as time commitment goes when you read an article. Often, online, I feel like it was completely truncated or surprisingly stretched out. And don't get me started on advertising. It's so much easier to ignore advertising that doesn't move on a printed page. I'll never get used to those stupid ads where something moves around or dances, continuously annoying me. You can't turn them off, either.

All that said, major and minor newspapers are failing, folding and leaving communities unserved in a sudden rush. This can't be a good thing. I would prefer if they transmorgrified into online versions rather than disappearing completely. I understand that the online alternatives of classified ads are one of the biggest factors robbing newspapers of their revenue. They should have seen this and come up with alternatives. If they had invested in a system that would have made selling or finding things locally more easy and convenient, and worked to make it make money without costing the buyers and sellers too much, it would have been an overwhelming success. I can think of dozens of ways to do this, lots of features I would build into the system if it was me.

They could also have had two tiers, free news and subscription news. With subscription news, you get to post comments (don't let any crazy kid with a computer spew nonsense onto comment pages - if you pay, you'll leave thoughtful comments that I would actually want to read), you get more content and sources, maybe even emails of the authors, and ability to pic pictures off the web. It's possible.

Whatever system we come up with and settle down to in the future, if it serves communities, provides timely and accurate content, and keeps us connected to the world, that's alright with me.

Childraising

I've got a son coming into the world any day now, and I've been thinking about the things I'd like to do with him to raise him. I know that these are a little like ideals, and while they are nice ideas, I'm sure I'll fall short of trying all of them and give up on others after attempting them, but for now, it's nice to have these little fantasies about what I can do to help prepare my son for the world.

I started making a list when the ideas started coming left and right, but I don't have the list now, I'm just going to remember the parts of it that I can.

First of all, I don't want to be one of those parents that is going to do exactly the things that my parents did if I thought it was stupid when I was on the receiving end. This means not telling them that their music is crap, specifically. Generally, it means to allow for differences in opinion, allow them to enjoy whatever cultural offerings they enjoy as long as it doesn't hurt someone or prevent them from getting their work done. This means paying attention to the difference between letting them enjoy something that isn't to your taste and stating your objections when they are well reasoned.

I want to teach him Spanish from the time he is a little baby, so that it will be easier when he's older.

I've always thought it would be good to teach them sign language, because I understand that children can learn that way before they can speak. I think sign language is also great for communicating when the noise level is too high, when you're trying to be silent, or as a secret shared language or code.

I want to have him try to do things blindfolded from time to time. It's amazing how many things you can learn to do if you can't see. I used to watch a show when I was a kid about a blind detective, and you learned a lot of the tricks the blind use to navigate and relate to the world. I think a variation on blind man's bluff could make the exercise fun and interesting.

I want to try some ESP exercises with him. I have heard that ESP is a latent talent that people have that they unlearn as they age. Perhaps he will be able to use it a little bit if he opens his mind to the possibility at a young age.

I'd like to teach him to exercise, stretch, and meditate. These are skills that would be very handy to have built in early, rather than wishing you had some way to learn it when it's more difficult because you are set in your ways.

I'd like to teach him to appreciate nature and wildlife, and to photograph it. There's no reason not to hand over one of today's super simple cameras and let your kid have a shot at it. Appreciating nature is usually just a matter of paying attention, then actually thinking about what you are seeing. It can be pretty simple.

I want him to appreciate books and to learn that there are many fun secrets buried in them. I want to remember not to assume that he's too young to understand something. It's worth trying to explain it no matter what age he is.

I would like to teach him to introduce himself to people and not be shy.

I plan on exposing him to things that many would consider too dangerous for a little kid, mostly to teach him what those dangers are so he doesn't discover it on his own in what could be a fatal mistake.

I want to teach him to admit his mistakes and admit when he doesn't know something, and I hope to teach by example. I vow to avoid taking correction from him when he catches me saying or doing something incorrectly.

I hope to teach him manners by treating him respectfully. I hope to teach him humor by letting him be silly. I hope to teach him love by loving him unconditionally, and tolerance by accepting him for what he is.

I wish I could be certain of remembering these pledges, and always abiding by them, and I hope he will forgive me for my shortcomings. I hope he'll be proud that I am his father and know that I am proud of his accomplishments and better nature.

I think I'm ready.

Plague Year

I just finished reading Plague Year by Jeff Carlson. I would highly recommend this book for fans of the science fiction, future struggle, scientists as heroes genre. SPOILER ALERT. Do not read further if you plan on enjoying the book yourself.

The short summary of the book is that an engineered self replicating nano-machine gets loose and almost destroys humanity. The book focuses on the survivors and their desire to reverse the machine plague.

I thought I was into a poorly written and possibly disappointing book as I started it out. I didn't care about the characters stranded on a mountaintop in California, or the whiny self centered astronaut-scientist at the other focal point of the story. What compelled me to continue was the basic premise of the story.

The machines that nearly wiped out humanity did not work over 10,000 feet. People throughout the world retreated to mountainous regions and struggled to survive. Tiny pockets of survivors clustered on lone mountaintops in California, while some 14 million people made it to the highlands in Colorado, preserving the core of the American government. Some strange war is being waged in the highlands of Asia, which you are only given tantalizing glimpses of.

While you are treated mid-story to an interesting landing of the Space Shuttle on a highway near Leadville Colorado, up to that point in the book, I was still wondering what I was waiting for. Things quickly unravel at that point. You find that the remnant of the American government is brutalizing the survivors and using their carefully collected scientists not to find a cure for the machine plague, but a way of weaponizing it further so they can destroy the Chinese and Muslim survivors and emerge to rule the world. While the astronaut-scientist plots to cure the plague and thwart the evil machinations of the corrupt government, the other big reveal happens at the other end of the story. One of the survivors of the plague on an isolated mountaintop turns out to be the designer of the nano-machines. He makes a harrowing trip to a nearby mountaintop where there is a radio and contacts the government.

Now the book really jells together in an exquisite fashion. The government flies out the astronaut-scientist who teams up with the designer. They figure out how to fix the mess, and go down to raid the original lab that the machines were designed in. There is a mini-coup and the scientist quickly engineers an anti-machine plague from the remnants of the lab. Angered at their defiance, the corrupt government sends in troops to quell the coup and snatch the technology and information. The heavy handedness of the response virtually guarantees the destruction of the prize, but the scientist manages to slip away with the cure and 3 survivors of the coup. The book ends with the coup survivors infecting themselves with the cure and splitting up to strike out and spread the cure among any other survivors.

The book has some nice embedded ironies. The designer resorts to cannibalism to survive, which is what his invention did to the human race. The surviving government, rather than providing refuge and seeking to cure the plague, brutalizes the survivors and seeks to make things even worse. The savior scientist has to go rogue in order to be effective and ends up working almost alone against overwhelming odds. In the end, the cure is passed on by drinking the blood of the inoculated ushers of the cure, which is resonant of a religious salvation.

In the end, well worth the read, and a good story to be made into a movie.

The World Without Us

I just finished reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.

This book was released a while back, late summer of 2007. I remember when it came out, the book tour generated a great deal of interest. One of my favorite shows, Science Friday had the author on for an extended interview.

What I remember about the coverage of the book was that it mostly focused on how quickly our achievements would decay or be erased. There was a kind of joyful interest in contemplating our homes and cities and factories crumbling and going back to nature.

It reminded me of the Gunslinger series by Stephen King. In those stories, the heroes have to navigate through a long dead New York City of the distant future. The eminent collapse of the Brooklyn bridge was a strong symbol of decay taking down the works of man.

This book was not just a fantasy for those that dream of a pre-human pristine earth, this book was a condemnation of our environmental legacy.

The reader that they got for the audiobook was annoying. He had a condescending sneer in his voice that dripped with scorn and seemed to be saying, "See what you did? You wrecked the planet, you stupid humans!" At first, I thought that this was inconguous with the intent of the author, but by the end of the book, I was thinking maybe it was not.

I'm more than willing to believe that we have not paid enough attention to the environment. I'm more than a little leery of launching new technologies before the impacts are fully understood. This book goes way beyond where I sit on the green spectrum. Weisman seems to both condemn humanity for the mess we have made, but also to offer no hope that the planet can ever completely recover from what we have done.

I believe in technology. I know its limits and its shortcomings, but I believe that if we continue to seek answers and continue to monitor our actions and the world around us, that our understanding will generate better answers to the problems posed by the interaction of technology and the world around us. The problem with Weisman's book is that the question he poses is, "What if we just quit right now?" The answer to that is the same answer you get for any problem. If you quit in the middle, you get a mess. What we need to do is commit ourselves to seeing through what we have started and making it right.

Dark Knight

By now, everyone knows the story of Heath Ledger. He just finished filming the latest movie in the Batman series and died unexpectedly. I liked Heath Ledger. His film roles were really good, in my opinion, and he seemed like a good guy in real life.

This role is amazing. I was not prepared to agree with that, after all the hype about it. It felt like he was being canonized after he died. I figured it would be a good performance, at best, and that the praise was the movie equivalent of not speaking ill of the dead.

The movie is interestingly written. While never an avid reader of comics myself, I've always enjoyed the movies that were derived from comics, from X-Men to Spiderman. The other Batman movies seem like cartoons, a little too childish or contrived. This movie, while still full of the comics book-like special effects and toys, manages to have some depth to it.

I'm not going to spoil it for anyone reading this. Partly, this is because I'm not certain what the actual deeper meaning here is. They explore the nature of good and evil, the way one almost creates the other. They talk about chance and fate versus effort and choice.

Mostly, you just enjoy watching Heath Ledger paint the depth of the character of the Joker, in a way that the original series or Jack Nicholson's 80's portrayal could not touch.

This I Believe

I have been thinking about what I would write to the "This I Believe" program on NPR for a long time. Listening to the essays on the radio and through podcasts, I've often considered going through the exercise of writing one myself, but what I would write has been an assorted variety of whatever is on my mind at the time.

I believe in a lot of things, but when I started thinking about how I would explain my beliefs to my new son when he gets older, I realized that I could sum it up to say that I believe that nothing is absolute.

I would normally dive into the topic of beliefs by explaining the difference between things we know and those that we just suspect without concrete evidence. In a classical science versus religion debate, you can separate beliefs as ideas you hold to be true in the absense of proof, versus ideas that are supported by observable facts and can often be recreated by an experimenter. Belief in religion, by definition cannot be proven.

Some people believe that religion and science are, by their nature and definition, opposed to one another. They believe they you can't be a scientist of faith or a true member of your religion and also accept science. While there are areas were science and faith directly contradict on another, the vast majority of the ideas that religion deals with and the tenets that make up science do not have anything to do with each other.

While I believe that science holds the best hope of answering questions and solving the great mysteries of life, it does not and cannot answer some of the important questions in life, from the simple to the profound. Should we treat each other nicely, is murder wrong, or is it wrong to benefit at the expense of someone else's suffering.

You can't prove or disprove a moral code.

By my definition, religion is not confined to matters of organized faiths. I've never liked the idea of a group of people persistantly proclaiming that they know the unprovable truth about the deepest mysteries of life and humanity and everyone else is deluded. Because faith has no prove, I believe it has to be approached as a tenative or possible thing. In fact, religion's best power is the ability to have people explore their path in life and make corrections when things are going off track. But beyond major religions, I believe there are many other mysteries in life that are worth exploring. Ghosts, reincarnation, telepathy, human energy, and precognition are all areas that are more like religion than science. That doesn't mean they aren't interesting or important, just that no one has written a book and organized a church around them.

Sometimes science is seen as a way of exploring religion. Experiments have been done to measure the weight of a human soul, for example. Other times, scientific discoveries have threatened religious doctrine, such as when Copernicus described how the earth goes around the sun. Religion and science survived the battle that arose from that new idea, but both were changed.

Not anchoring your beliefs, yet being certain of what you know and not adrift in confusion is a good way to live your life. I believe it's best not to deal in absolutes. Even science rewrites theories from time to time when new evidence arises. Keeping your mind open and not getting stuck in absolutes is the best way to greet the new things that you encounter in life.

New Intellectual Property Model for BioEnergy Tech Development

I sent the following letter to Barack Obama and his Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

I would like to see a new form of technological development applied to bioenergy and alternate energy development. It would borrow elements from the aircraft and ship building during WWII.

During that time, the rules governing the competing goal of intellectual property rights (proprietary ownership of methods and designs) and rapid development through sharing knowledge were re-written. We need to share technological information in order to bring energy source changes to the public quicker.

A wiki style forum to share ideas in particular fields would have the advantage of bringing all the designers and developers abreast of the latest developments, as well as producing a consensus design that will provide standardization (and therefore more rapid diffusion) of the emerging technology.

In order to reward creativity and incentivize design efforts, we need to come up with a hybrid intellectual property rights formula. I propose that we use government money to fund selected pilot plant projects, with the stipulation that all design development will be instantly published and widely disseminated. This allows private individuals, research organizations, and private industry to develop technology without shouldering the huge capital expense of R&D. In exchange, technologies developed will be un-patentable, or patented for free public use. In some situations, we should offer patents that do not allow the patent holder to restrict use of the technology by others, in exchange for some licensing fee.

Using this plan, an example would be development of an algae energy plant. We could set the pilot plant up at some medium sized city's wastewater treatment plant, and start the job of turning the waste stream into clean water and algae based bio-fuels (ethanol and biodiesel, as well as livestock feed). University based researchers could test strains of algae, industry representatives could try equipment to convert the algae to lipids and starches, and engineering or research firms could be brought in to administer the pilot plant (and in the process learn how to plan and sell the plants to future customers).

Please consider the need to alter the current rules of intellectual property in order to speed development of our future alternative energy technologies.

Thank you.

Mike Jones

What Happened

I would add a couple of words in there to make it more salty, but I'll keep it clean.

I read former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan's book, What Happened.

I am not impressed.

If you did not like Bush and ran out to buy this book in order to hear all the dirty little secrets about the Bush administration, hoping to hear about how corrupt and incompetent they are, this is not that book.

This is a book where a boot licking weasel tries to have it both ways. He's trying to essentially say that everything we believed was right, but we just botched the execution. I'm not particularly impressed with Scott as a great thinker of the day, especially after listening to his analysis. In the few times where he actually brings up a thorny and interesting subject, rather than taking it on and analyzing it a little, he says "that would take a whole other book to explore that subject." This is code for, "if we looked closer at that, we'd see even more glaring flaws in our ideology, so let's just skirt by the issue." More than anything else, it's a regurgitation of the endless stream of talking points that the Bush Administration is so famously known for, a strange continuation of the endless right wing propaganda, while also trying to somehow point out its flaws and explain why he wasn't responsible for where it went wrong.

Some times, he does incredible reversals. He talks about this horrible contentiousness in Washington, and how Bush wanted to rise above it and play a more honorable game, but the evil media or the evil entrenched politics of Washington sucked him into behaving just like everyone else. Then he starts bashing the Clinton administration. He has the gall to say that all this attack politics got completely out of control in the way that the Republicans continually attacked Clinton, and then to imply that it was Clinton's moral failings that brought it all on, or worst yet, the way Clinton defended himself helped cause the partisanship.

He spends a lot of time talking about what an attack dog Rove was and how he put politics above all other considerations when it came to making decisions. At the same time, this is the guy he strove to impress more than anyone else and he heaps praise on him for what a smart operator he is.

The way he spins the run up to the Iraq war is that Bush never really cared about Weapons of Mass Destruction, that all he really cared about was spreading Democracy and Freedom in the Middle East, but that he did not feel the American people would buy that, so he was a little disingenuous about why he REALLY wanted to go into war.

He gives little glimpses about how the personalities in the White House inter meshed and worked together. He says that Vice President Cheney would never give his opinion to President Bush in front of anyone else, and even within the staff, no one really knew much about what he thought or just how much influence he had.

I hope Scott makes enough money from this book to live on for the rest of his life, or that he has a plan for a career outside of politics, because there's nothing in this book that will endear him to either party. In the end, it's a sad book, of this lonely little man that just wants acceptance for himself and validation of his ideas to a polarized public that is unlikely to give him either.

Genghis by Conn Iggulden Book Review

Sometimes you get an unexpected bonus. I checked out an audiobook, Genghis: Birth of an Empire and started listening to it without reading any background on it.

After a few chapters, I finally thought "what is this story about?" The main character was a guy named Temüjin and he did not seem to be headed for any greatness. Before I spent too much time on a story that might not be anything like what I expected, I looked it up.

I knew the book was fiction, but it's that genre of book that is fiction in the sense that no one could have know the dialogue or minor action. The background or overlay of the story is accurate. I guess you could call it fictionalized history or historical fiction.

Genghis Khan lived around the year 1200. As you can imagine, there are not very good records of this time. However, he apparently dictated his history at some time in his life. All original versions of his history in his native language are lost, but a Chinese translation survived. This is what Conn Iggulden's book was based on.

This is a story that really grips you. You can imagine the harsh conditions and the tough life that the Mongol people endured. Temüjin was betrayed and abandoned with his family when he was 12 and not only managed to live, but went on to unify a group of tribes that had been warring against each other for as long as they could remember. The book takes you up to the betrayal of the Chinese ambassador and the defeat of the Tatars. There is a second book that should take you into some of the other conquests, I am definitely going to listen to it.

It was fortunate to find this book as an audiobook. The problem is that the names mess you up. They don't pronounce their K's, so the tribal leaders were actually called "Han". The images that stick in your mind when you listen to the story are the way they shoot their arrows when all 4 feet of the horse are off the ground, so that they get a steady shot.

It's not hard it imagine a life this harsh, with survival of the fittest making the tribes grow stronger each year, and constant warfare honing the warrior skills to a peak. The only thing that was missing was for someone to come along and unify the tribes into a single unstoppable unit.

It seems like a time long past and no longer able to give us lessons for today, but strength coming out of adversity and failure being a primer for success are two things that could be considered pertinent for today. Also useful, the thought of a unifying leader that can bring everyone together and make for an unstoppable people.

Automaker's Bailout

Here's the letter I sent to my Congressman and Senators:

Automaker Bailouts:

The automakers need a bailout, but apparently, they can afford expensive pop-up ads in AOL asking me to contact my member of Congress to lobby them to help the Automaker Industry.

It motivated me to write to you, but not in support of them. This is the same industry that has spent millions in lobbying the Congress over the last 25 years to keep CAFE standards low so that they could continue to make crappy cheap cars that use fuel like you are flushing it down the toilet. Rather than leading the world with engineering, they dragged their heels and argued that it just couldn't be done. They've been telling us for years that they can't make more fuel efficient cars.

A year ago, I started looking for a car to replace my 20 mpg Jeep Cherokee. I wanted to buy something that got better gas mileage, and had found that most cars now got worse gas mileage. So if I want to buy a car that won't bankrupt me with the fuel charges when gas gets back up to $4 a gallon, there is no smart American choice.

We can put a man on the moon, but we can't make an 80 or 100 mpg car? We can supply the world with trucks, tanks, boats, and planes during WWII, but we can't figure out how to make a plug in hybrid or electric car? We can figure out atomic energy, but we can't figure out a solar car?

Detroit deserves to die on it's own capitalistic rhetoric, if nothing else. In February of this year, Bob Lutz, GM's Chairman, made a very public statement that global warming was a crock. This was probably just after he approved of taking another couple of mpg's off of the efficiency of the latest truck they make. These people are the problem, not part of the solution. They are why we are so addicted to foreign fuel, and why we are having such a hard time with energy consumption in this country. Hard core proud capitalists are the first to invoke "too bad" or "they should have known better" or "survival of the fittest" when someone else falls on hard times, but they see it entirely differently when it's their own bad decisions that endanger their industry.

If we have to bail them out, if everyone is set on doing that, I believe it should come at a high price. I think they should be forced to fast-track develop high mpg cars, as well as electric and alternate energy cars, and prohibited from ever producing another Hummer or Excursion.

In addition, I believe that if they are going to get bailed out, that their top executives, who unarguably have failed at their job of keeping their companies sound and steered in the right direction, should be limited in their compensation. If we bail them out, and then the next week, I see an article talking about how Bob Lutz got his $300 executive bonus, you should expect to get many more letters from constituents.

We've just elected a lot more Democrats to Congress and will finally have an intelligent President we can be proud of, so let's not lay a big rotten egg with the first major decision of the new Congress and President and allow these auto industry jokers to get a fat bailout without a whole lot of conditions. They should almost wish they hadn't asked for the bailout when they see the conditions. The biggest irony is that if you force them to make efficient cars, Americans will start buying their cars again, and they will get healthy due to natural market forces. You almost have to legislate good sense back into them.

2nd Civil War

This is my first Non Book Review.

I checked out the book The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America by Ronald Brownstein.

Then I succeeded in not reading it for 30 days until I had to return it to the library. This Non Book Review is an attempt by me to explain why that was a good thing.

I read the first couple of chapters and felt this sinking feeling. The book’s title pretty much says it all. This is a book about American polarization. If you’ve been alive and aware of current events in this country for the last 16 years, you know how we’ve been divided to the point where we really hate each other.

This book rubs your nose in that.

I wanted to find out why we were in this mess and what it would take to get out of it.

I skipped forward to the later chapters, hoping that by then, the conflict would be solved, everyone would be singing together with their arms around each other, and the author would explain where everything went wrong and how we could make it so it would never happen again.

Unfortunately, there is no happy ending. Fear and hate are two commodities that don’t need a bailout.

It's A Love Story

If you haven't see the video for this new Taylor Swift song, it's at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4xmxb9K8RI on YouTube. I didn't know who Taylor Swift was a short time ago, now I see her in the gossip and entertainment news with increasing frequency.

She broke out on the country music scene two years ago when she was 16. I thought it was Clair Dane when I first saw the Love Story video. Her story is pretty interesting, and I was pleased to find that she writes her own songs.

As I grow older, I keep in mind the infuriating comments of older people I have heard. The comments fall under the category of how stupid young people are, derision about the choices made and the mystifying behavior they display. I had the sense at the time that those comments were being directed at myself and my contemporaries to know that they were wrongheaded, petty in spirit, and lacked insight and understanding. In particular, when whithered old crones with their tiny pursed lips spat distaste and condescension about the music my generation loved, I knew that they had closed their mind to the truth and rejected the best things we loved without opening their heart to knowing and cherishing them with us. I vowed never to fall into their trap, to try to keep my mind and heart open as I aged and try to be one that still remembered and understood the passions of youth.

Listening to Tayor Swift's Love Story reminds me of that vow and makes me realize something else about the age divide. There are things that young people know better than their elders. Passion is a product of youth, something you can forget as you get older. Now that's not absolute, it's not fair to say that you lose all passion as you age, but your passions shift from music and romance to politics, your job, your church, keeping your house nice, and raising your children, among other things.

When you are young, you are really good at romance. I say this even though I remember my own and other's awkwardness, whether by shyness on one extreme or embarrassing yourself on the other extreme. It's true, you may not be as smooth and polished when you are young, the words you come up with may not be worthy of publishing to inspire others, but you are an expert at one thing. When you're young, you open yourself to your loves and throw yourself into them with abandon.

I can rationalize this and say that young people have never been hurt or humiliated yet, and that allows them to leap without reservations. That's true in many circumstances, but not always. Not to get too technical, but scientist have also found that your brain does not easily produce some of the chemicals that it did in youth. I can't find the reference, but it talked about how children love gifts, but older people rarely get as excited about receiving presents when they get older. I've noticed this in myself.

So I think it's fair to say that you lose something as you get older, something besides just innocence. You lose some of the capacity to appreciate the sweeter things in life.

When I see how someone young is finding their passions in life, whether they are creative or romantic, I can't help but get a little wistful. I don't think it's over when you get older, I think this is what the young have to teach the older people, to remember the excitement of discovering the things in life that thrill you. One thrill I know is just seeing that love catch fire for the first time in someone young.

Inexperience is a great thing.

Population Control

I listen to several science podcasts that keep mentioning population control. If the issue is food prices, energy production, urban sprawl, light pollution, species extinction, or global warming, it usually comes down to overpopulation.

I remember the fear of overpopulation back in the 70s prompted some to illustrate the problem with graphs showing how growth takes off. This is the first time I knew and understood about exponential curves. Growth, even a very small percentage, is exponential. This means that it accelerates and eventually the curve gets so steep that it is practically straight up.

In developed nations, the curve is not growing as fast as in less developed nations. Some say it's because undeveloped nations need their children as a source of cheap labor, but there really is not much understanding of the phenomenon.

I came up with an idea about 5 or 6 years ago, when thinking about overpopulation, abortion, teenage pregnancy, and other child raising issues. I sometimes come up with solutions to multiple problems by starting with the statement, "This would never happen, but..." If you throw out the downside of a solution, such as the fact that it may impact on someone's personal freedom, or no one in power would ever agree to it, or the general public would never stand for it, then you can come up with some interesting solutions. Let's try to ignore the fact that China has a sordid history of mandating behaviors that are against the population and sometimes quite scary when you consider personal freedoms.

This idea started as an argument that in this country we always line up on opposite sides of the ideological divide and take diametrically opposed positions on issues, when often there are solutions in the middle that borrow from both ends of the spectrum. Never mind that these bridging crossover ideas never see the light of day. Abortion foes do not believe in killing a fetus. Abortion rights advocates want women to control when they have children, in part so that men cannot enslave them into raising children rather than making their own decisions and choices in life. I've always thought quietly to myself that if people can't control their urges or plan their reproductive schedule any better, that abortion is about the only way to prevent rampant overpopulation. We seem to think that most abundant animal species need us to help "cull" their population, but we never seem to feel that way about people. That's because people are special.

I've always wished we could just take abortion off the table. Find some solution that satisfies both sides. After all, abortion is only chosen because the baby is not wanted. What if we could do something that would guarantee that all children were wanted? How about if we only conceived when we really wanted to? Let's forget for a moment that many of the religious fundamentalists that are most up in arms about abortion are also very against birth control because they think it promotes promiscuity. What you really need is to have everyone that does not want a child to easily and reversibly be made infertile. For this to really have the maximum effect, you need to have this apply to not only women, but men too.

OK, so let's assume that there is some kind of simple procedure developed in the future, maybe some kind of silicone plug that is inserted into your tubes, that can later be removed and full fertility would be restored. It's fiction right now, we need some science to come about to make this possible. Then let's say that all people, as they reach puberty and become able to conceive are given this infertility treatment. What happens then?

Further stipulation would be that these 13 year olds would all be given the treatment and that they would be able to reverse it only after they turned 18, when they had their full rights as adults. No more teen pregnancy, no more babies having babies. The thing I really like about this is that it empowers men in family planning. Men cannot be faked out or blackmailed or lied to in the matter of pregnancy.

You could take it further and say that you only get to reverse the treatment so you could conceive when you were financially secure, in a committed relationship, and drug free (and not a criminal). So not only are all children conceived wanted by their parents, they are also brought into a stable environment. Imagine all the country's children automatically knowing one thing, that they were wanted by both of their parents, and also not having to grow up with a drug abusing, or absent, or criminal parent. Imagine all children having a stable home where hunger or want were not present.

It would solve so many problems. The only thing is that we humans are pretty attached to our problems, and not yet ready to give them up.

How Soon We Forget

I was listening to a This American Life episode where they were travelling in Pennsylvania to document the character of this swing state's campaigning.

This is a state that voted for Kerry in 2004, and for Gore in 2000, not to mention for Clinton in '92 and '96. McCain thinks he can win it and is spending a great deal of time there.

The podcast had a section on Hillary supporters for McCain. They were very fired up, very against Obama, and very involved in campaigning for McCain. I listened to their speeches and reasons for switching the party they support, and I declare them to have no memory of history.

Working in an office with conservative people, and serving industries full of conservatives, and living in a reddish state next to a beet red state, I spent the 1990's listening to right wing rhetoric. For those out there that were either so deep in a blue territory, or who were too young or in a coma, let me remind you what this was like. Conservatives hated the Clintons. You might think that they would focus their hatred on the Clinton actually in power, but you would be wrong. People hated Hillary Clinton. I didn't understand it at the time, and I still don't, I'm just repeating and reporting what I heard. I did not see anything wrong with Hillary Clinton, and used to tell die hard Hillary haters that I thought she was a hottie, just to watch them cringe.

When the 2008 primaries came along and Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy, my primary reaction was weariness. I never realized how tired of all the nonsense, bile, and kooky conspiracy theories I was. I also knew that even though Bush's ratings were low and the political winds were favoring a change to the left, that having Hillary on the ticket would supercharge the right. I figured we had to get ready to listen to an avalanche of hatred, fear, and stupid stories (easily debunked if you spent about ten seconds on Snopes).

These people on the right hated Hillary with a fervor that was not to be believed.

Yet as soon as she was knocked out of the primaries, the first thing they did was to use her speeches in the primaries to try to discredit Obama. I remember at the time thinking, "You don't even like her! Why are you telling us to listen to her?"

So when I hear someone that formerly supported Hillary talk about supporting McCain, I really have to wonder at their sanity and awareness. Why would you help the very people that reviled your candidate? This doesn't make any sense at all. It must be some kind of Stockholm syndrome, because I can't think of any logical explanation for it.