Be careful what you think you know

I went to an Open House at my Alma Mater and had to go to Call Hall, which houses the Dairy Science Department. They have an ice cream shop and we always go there and get a treat while we are touring campus.

This year the line for the ice cream was very long. We did that mental calculation everyone does in such a situation, how long will it take and is it worth it, and we got in line. A man came down the hall opposite the line and was looking around as he walked slowly toward the back of the line. For some reason, he stopped at me and asked me, "How much is the ice cream?"

The question kind of irritated me, because I had no idea and didn't care. If you want it, you get in line and buy it. I fleetingly noticed that he was dressed kind of rough, but at that time, I assumed he was a campus worker, or some kind of laborer. I just told him I didn't know, and I didn't venture any kind of guess, either. I wasn't rude, but I was a bit taken aback and not really sure how to respond to him. After he left, I made fun of him a little bit, remarking what a stupid question it was.

We laughed and talked, in a good mood, while waiting for the ice cream. When someone else needed to find a bathroom, I was more than willing to help point it out to them.

As we sat outside in the sun eating out ice cream, I saw the guy leaving the building, walking away empty handed. In a flash, it all came together. I noticed his worn but neat clothes, pants held up with something more like a rope than a belt.

The guy was homeless.

When he asked the price of the ice cream, he was probably hoping that they were giving it away in celebration of Open House. I didn't know he was homeless then, and the question that I thought was stupid was very important to him. Why did he pick me to ask about the price? Did he maybe think I looked kind or something? What an ass I was for making fun of him.

I thought about running after him and getting him some ice cream, but he was gone and the impulse was weak and confused. As time has clarified the incident, I daydream that I could have tracked him down and got him some ice cream, or better yet, invited him into line with us and taken care of him. It wouldn't have cost me much in the way of time or money. The man was trying to keep up his appearance and was polite when he approached me. While I wasn't cruel to him, I made the wrong assumptions and lost an opportunity to satisfy myself that I could be a better person than I am.

The next week, I went out to lunch with my wife Andrea and I thought of something similar to this. The ice cream incident was a matter of not being generous towards someone and finding out that they were actually more worthy of attention.

We talked about many issues that I realized were similar. I have an acquaintance that sometimes seems to delight in undermining the confidence of people. His wife seems to have it all together, but my wife thinks she is depressed because she hasn't worked in a few years and seems to be without direction. We supposed that this might be in response to a steady erosion of confidence under the direction of her husband. Maybe he doesn't know he's doing it, he's just so competitive that it's a reflex to raise himself by dragging down others. I always thought that she was a mindless supporter of her husband, but now I wonder if there's not something more like a hostage crisis going on.

I was also thinking about people that asked for quotes and wanted lots of help on jobs when they had no intention of buying anything. These are high effort for little profit customers (although technically you have to buy something to be a customer). I had several incidents where I reflexively helped people that in the back of my mind I thought I should not waste so much time on. Sometimes I found out later that they were stuck in a bad situation and trying to make the best of it. My help was one of the few good things to happen to them.

I guess you'll never know everything you could know about a situation while you are in it. It's easy to realize or find out more later and beat yourself up for not reacting better. I can't live my life haunted by not knowing that someone needs help or a kind word from me. I won't always catch on fast enough. The only saving grace is the revisionist history we all play with our personal memories. My alternate outcome has me sitting in the sun with the homeless man, enjoying some ice cream and kindness.

Religious Preconceptions

I look around at the state of organized religion in America and sometimes I wonder how it can keep swinging in this direction without any restraint. Our fundamentalist in this country have had quite a run in the last few years. They are mobilized to vote (one could argue that there would not have been 8 years of a Bush Presidency without them), they try to restrict the teaching of evolution in the classroom, they try to get their religious views codified and incorporated into government, they want to restrict abortion for everyone regardless of that person's own beliefs, they want to define stem cell research as abortion and restrict it, and they are increasingly intolerant of anyone that does not think and believe as they do. They paint much of popular culture as against them and they claim society is degenerating and threatens their morals and most be regulated. These fundamentalist religious Americans are just as guilty of closing their eyes to reality as the Taliban and other fundamentalist Islamic sects that we have painted as so out of touch and such a threat.

So why aren't more people alarmed? Is it that strict restrictive ultraconservative religious movements are always wrong, unless it's your religion?

There is much talk and fear of Iran's President Ahmadinejad. This is a man that is working on missiles and nuclear weapons and keeps saying that Israel deserves to be destroyed. We all shake our heads when he says that the Holocaust wasn't real. Whether he believes the Holocaust really happened or not, this is a political statement. Israel was granted statehood as a direct result of the Holocaust, in fact, you could say that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust. Amadinejad's Holocaust denial is his way of taking away the justification of Israel. Does he really believe it? You can't tell. But we see so clearly that the man is insane because there is no reason to justify or defend him. If he were saying crazy things in defense of Christianity, we'd be watching a significant portion of our countrymen voicing support for his views.

There are those that want to strike at Iran, and I can't say that their reasoning is completely without merit. The problem is that even if we knew we were trying to remove a small fraction that led the country but didn't represent the views of the vast majority of the people, it still wouldn't be perceived that way. You could argue that we should invade Iran because a small group has taken control and will not allow their fellow countrymen to believe anything but what they believe.

This has striking parallels to the pre-2001 situation in Afghanistan with the Taliban. We felt perfectly justified in routing out that government. Granted, they were a anarchist style of government that did little but enforce morals, and as a result gave free rein to terrorists to use their country as a base and safe haven, but you have to admit, that other countries are guilty of harboring terrorists, they are just less blatant about it.

I've always had more scientific objections to religious movements. Denial of the age of the earth or evolution (and to a lesser extent, climate change) is often the stubborn position of American Christian Fundamentalists. Religious groups are always quick to refute any perceived contradiction to their holiest beliefs. They believe views that contradict the Bible will introduce doubt that will cause their members to reject their religion in its entirety. As a result, they often pick fights with scientists' claims that contradict strict readings or common interpretations of the Bible, and usually start to paint the scientist as deliberately trying to tear apart their religion. This is laughable, if it weren't so deadly serious. Some poor nerdy scientist finds some dusty bone and gets all excited about finding some fossils that provide some previously unseen link in the long chain of evolution, and pretty soon he's being painted as being in league with the devil. I picture some dusty dirty archaeologist with a pith helmet on, jumping up and down on some arid digging site and in the moment of his greatest joy being screamed at by some fanatic that telling him that he hates god. The reaction of the scientist is just complete bewilderment. He's totally focused on understanding something with painstakingly gathered evidence, and it never occurred to him that someone would take offense at it.

If you do engage scientists in religious discussions, you often find people of faith. I think many people are quite comfortable allowing for both science and religion in their lives. These people are not relying on the Bible as their sole source of information. In fact, they are allowing for the fact that God may be more complex than we can possibly comprehend. As Isaac Asimov said, any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It is the same with religious beliefs. If you believe in God, how do you suppose you could possibly understand creation? Maybe that's our purpose in life, to keep picking it apart and trying to figure out how it was done.

Surge on Mexico

Lately we've been hearing from the administration about how the Surge in Iraq worked. They say it kept violence down in the areas it was active, but others point out that it exposed the weaknesses of the Iraqi government and showed that they are not making progress towards self-rule. The surge originally was supposed to buy the government time to get organized and get control so we would not be the ones providing all the security for the country.

I heard an argument for staying in Iraq voiced as, "Do you want $4 per gallon Gasoline? We can't pull out!" Oil production in Iraq hasn't been that great lately, anyway. If it was, we would expect them to pay for their own defense. I believe that our presence and the disruption of being invaded and occupied is part of what helps keep prices high, as well as promoting instability in the region. To say that we are there to provide stability seems quite a stretch to me. The problem with Iraq maturing to the point of self-government is that after the Saddam years, there is no one of any power or capability left to govern. Saddam made sure that anyone of any ability was "suppressed" (usually killed, but also exiled). Today, corruption and mismanagement is the rule. To expect a leader with a stabilizing influence that is not just trying to enrich himself or promote his own agenda is probably hoping for too much.

As I was thinking about all these issues with Iraq, it occurred to me that much of the same can be said about Mexico.

The problems with Mexico are similar in that corruption and mismanagement is causing a poor economy. In Mexico's case, the lack of opportunity this creates causes people to migrate north in search of better opportunities. Immigration resulting from a corrupt system is thought by many to be a big problem, a threat to us. So Mexican corruption causes us security concerns.

Therefore, we are equally justified in invading Mexico. We can liberate them from their crappy government and fix their dysfunctional system and make them more prosperous and less of a threat to us here. As they say about Iraq, we have to take care of their problem there so they won't follow us home. I believe an invasion and surge into Mexico is a valid response to this international crisis.

Mexico's oil wealth is an added bonus. The revenues from oil will make the war fund itself. The Mexican people are so downtrodden, they will surely hail us as liberators. As soon as a free democratic government can be put into power, we can leave them as a strong and stable ally.

Of course that's absurd. However, the line of reasoning is very similar to what we have been told about Iraq. You can hear the steady drumbeat of concerns about immigration being repeated by the same types of people that thought the Iraq War was and is a good idea, so it's not that crazy to expect the propaganda on immigration to morph into more extreme solutions and more intense rhetoric. Just brace yourself for more lunacy, that's all I'm saying.

Many decried the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes on countries as a horrible idea. Bad governments are allowed to continue all the time all over the world. When is it right or when do we have an obligation to go in and take over? If a country is exterminating a minority or can't provide for their people, is that enough to take over? We can't afford to run around the world trying to right all the wrongs, but at what point do we pass some threshold where it starts to seem like the right thing to do? And why can we not, as Americans, come anywhere close to consensus on this issue?

Misconceptions

I don't know where some people get their information or how they come to believe some of the things they do.

Check that. I know exactly where some people get their information and I know exactly why they come to believe it.

In our divided political climate, there's one thing that has worked hardest to keep us divided and polarized: right wing talk shows and blogs. If you're been alive in the United States since the mid 90's you definitely know someone that is a big fan of one or another of these blowhards: Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Savage, Drudge, and the whole of Fox News.

I don't mind if people have reasoned, well thought out positions that happen to be different from mine. What I do mind is when some illogical whack job with a talent for propaganda starts misleading people about how the world works and influences people to not worry about their own greed and poor choices - it's that LIBERAL over there that is screwing up the world.

I hear lots of seriously cockeyed statements being passed off as fact. Before I go too far, I have to say that conservatives are not the only ones making absurd statements. Rev. Wright's assertion that the government started AIDS and Rosey O'Donnell's claim that 9/11 was a government conspiracy come to mind, and that doesn't even begin to cover it.

Those are easy to dismiss as wild ravings, though. For some reason, some of the wild ravings, particularly anti-environmental ones, from the right really get under my skin. So here's a short list of some of the craziest ones.

CO2 is a natural product and it is ridiculous to classify it as a harmful pollutant. No one says that we should eliminate CO2 or that it's bad. At natural levels, it's around 5% of the atmosphere. It's fluctuated over geological time, but not much. It's stayed within a pretty tight band around an average that is about a quarter or a third of where it's at today. Today it's driving up very rapidly, and 999 out of 1000 actual schooled, studied, vetted, legitimate climate scientists will tell you that humans are tipping the scale in the increase. If you truly believe that you can't have too much of any natural substance, try sitting down and drinking 3 gallons of water all at once and see if you survive the ordeal.

Humans can't make that big of a difference, if one volcano went off, it would put more CO2 in the air than the world output of CO2. If true, my response is "so what?" Are we saying that if some other catastrophe would be worse, we should completely discount any other actions that aren't that bad? That's like saying "so what if I have a problem with cocaine, if I was shooting up heroin, I could destroy my life really quickly." Or better yet, so what about my drug problem, a truck could hit me tomorrow. By this logic, we should feel free to commit any act we want (criminal or negligent) because a comet could hit the earth some day and wipe everything out. Historically, volcanoes do erupt and disrupt weather patterns worldwide. Really large eruptions, like Krakatoa disrupted weather for a couple of years before the earth returned to more or less normal. What disrupted the weather was particulate in the upper atmosphere, not so much the CO2. It would be good to have the earth's climate system in a pretty good balance before getting a hammerblow such as this, rather than having it already teetering on the edge when hit hard by some extreme blow.

More oil is good. We should drill in Anwar and off the coast of Florida because we need more oil. Well, we are drilling in places we haven't for a long time, we're getting what used to be uneconomic reserves out of oil sands in Canada and the shale deposits in the U.S. are also being looked at seriously. We're thinking about drilling in the Arctic (can anyone imagine a nice combination of Titanic and Exxon Valdez?), and thinking about reviving coal in a big way. This is great if you believe in the rapture and figure there won't be a world to live in about 50 years from now, so it doesn't matter what you do today. Thinking that the solution to our problems is more oil is like the addicted gambler that thinks he has a gambling problem because all the casinos in town won't let him in anymore.

The latest strange flip-flop in anti-environmental propaganda was that we didn't need to increase ethanol production, and then once we did and grain prices started to spike, that ethanol production couldn't make any difference in grain prices. The 2000 to 2006 boom in ethanol made a lot of people a lot of money. When the bottom fell out of the Ethanol industry, a lot of people then started saying that it wasn't ever a valid model anyway. Now that food prices are spiking, these same people are saying that there is no way that this could be a result of ethanol production.

There is a problem with all this hot air and rhetoric. Many think that matters of fact are somehow subject to people's opinions and that we should somehow be able to express our view or vote democratically about reality. Reality doesn't care what you think. Reality has this nasty habit of disregarding your opinion and doing what it's going to do despite what you think. The problem is that complex systems do not then leave enormous signs in the sky that announce what's really happening. To find out what's really happening, you have to actually go out and do some research, not read a blog or listen to talk radio.

Decoding and Making Life

I listened to a podcast of WNYC's show Radiolab called (So Called) Life recently. You can see it at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/03/14

It was all about splicing together genes in unique new ways that don't occur in nature to make new life. I was taking a very long and enjoyable early morning walk in Wamego Kansas when I listened to this show the first time.

The show starts out talking about mash-ups from the natural world. These are mythological beasts like lions with eagle heads. Whether it's Pegasus or a Unicorn, people are fascinated with the improbable mixes of various creatures. The display of fantasy creatures at the Museum of Natural History was very popular.

The desire to play god and reinvent life is something that is of great interest to people. There have been examples of mixtures of two beings in a form called a chimera. The original Chimera was a creature of Greek myth that was a combination of various animals. DNA testing has made us realize that we have humans walking among us that are actual chimeras. What happens is you have two twins (not identical) that merge together in the womb and create a single person. The odd thing about this is that different organs or parts of the body would yield different DNA results. Somehow, the body makes one of each part correctly from the mash-up of two original organisms.

Some scientists have messed around and created artificial chimeras from dissimilar animals. They talked about Geeps, a mash-up of a sheep and a goat. You can see various attributes of the input animals expressed in various attributes, a sheep head and goat fur, for example.

The interesting part of the show talked about how early life was supposedly able to exchange genetic information from one organism to another. Genetic swapping caused a rapid increase in diversity. At some point in evolutionary history, this swapping stopped. They talked about the modern stage being human directed evolution.

The story talked about changes in bacteria and other simple forms, but there is also a counter movement that believes this could end up being a very bad idea. This is expressed in the movie "I Am Legend" where genetic manipulation to cure cancer mutates into a plague that almost wipes out all human life. The question is "Do we really understand the consequences of what we are doing?"

I've often thought that as I got older, there would be a opportunities to restore or enhance my senses. I figured medical technology would be developed to repair damage or aging that would also unlock the way these senses worked, making it easy to alter those senses. Imagine being able to see better in the dark, hear like a bat, see like a hawk, or smell like a dog. Imagine being able to breath water or run without tiring. I'm not the only one imagining it. The TV series Dark Angel was the forerunner of this speculation. In that show, Jessica Alba and her cohorts were genetically engineered/enhanced humans, made to be soldiers. Of course, there are massive problems with this, as they have to be kept under tight control or they will overcome "normal" humans. This was also addressed in the original Star Trek and one of the Star Trek movies about the Kahn character played by Ricardo Montebon. He was an enhanced human tried to take over the world and had to be exiled. Still, I would like to be able to see like a hawk.

Other issues that touch upon this way of thinking is the glut of DNA testing. Medical research has a strong desire to test, learn from, and study DNA for potential problems like human disease. They could just as easily search for people that are more enhanced than the baseline and figure out which genes provide these enhancements. The technology is not that great right now. It is much cheaper to analyze nowadays. My brother is a veterinarian and offers DNA tests for dogs for $80to figure out what their lineage is. We are not that far from being able to quickly and inexpensively read the genetic codes of people or whatever animals they want. The problem here is that you have 25,000 genes, each one with multiple functions and expressions, and all interacting with each other. Our chances of getting it right the first time are surely slim. They also bring up the potential for abuse, for deliberately inventing harmful agents and releasing them into the world. That is another question.

And the Rich Get Lazier

"The rich get rich and the poor get poorer." Many have probably heard this catchphrase, which Wikipedia attributes versions to President Andrew Jackson and President William Henry Harrison. In both cases, they were stating how government power should not be used to insure that government doesn't use its power to insure that those with wealth are made wealthier. Many people believe that this phrase was somehow popularized by communist movements, but you can see that even in the 19th century, U.S. Presidents were talking about it. The ultimate source for the phrase is from the New Testament verse Matthew 13:12 in the King James translation, so it certainly is not a new sentiment.

What I find to be apparent is that the rich get rich, then they get lazy. I'm not just talking about lazy as in physically inactive. I'm talking about mentally and fiscally lazy. It appears to me that many wealthy people are not hard working, engaged, involved, innovators, but people that want to sit on a pile of money while the rules are rigged to insure that the pile grows and the government keeps their hands off of it.

I can't count the number of times I hear business owners (or people that work for them and buy into their propaganda) bemoaning "regulations". It's as if they believe that the only purpose to regulating anything is to insure that capitalism and wealth creation is checked. The same goes for taxes. You'd think taxes were some kind of evil plot to drag down the wealthy. Regulations prevent people from focusing so much on their own greed and schemes that they can trash the environment or take advantage of others in the pursuit of their goals. I don't want to see clean water and clean air regulations rolled back so some obscenely wealthy oil executive can make 10% more than the already incomprehensible stratospheric salary that he made last year. The amount of money these people spend on baubles and trinkets is more than many people make in a year, and we're supposed to feel sorry for them because they have some kind of restriction placed on what they can do? When did the privileged become such victims? I can buy into the fact that everyone should pay the same percentage of their income into taxes. I can't believe that the average mega rich person doesn't have on their payroll or on retainer, a professional that can show him how to avoid paying the amount in taxes that the system says he should pay. I'd be surprised if the wealthiest men in America paid a higher percentage of their income in taxes than I did last year. That's purely a rant of mine, I have no proof or studies to back it up, so if someone actually did a study on it, I'd gladly eat my words.

More to the point, let's get off bitching and griping about taxes. There seems to be no reluctance by the conservatives in this country in paying taxes if the point if stomping on Iraq (check that - we're not even trying to pay for this war as it goes, we're charging it on the National Visa card). My point is that taxes provide necessary benefits. Whether it's an aircraft carrier or a smooth road to drive on, a school to educate someone or a safety net to catch those in need, these programs are part of our life and help make our standard of living so high. You can argue all you want about how the Europeans overtax their people, but the money has to come from somewhere, and whether it's funnelled through taxes or usage fees, whether it is government enforced or voluntary for individuals, we end up with the same standard of living, the same generally peaceful and prosperous society. You don't want to abandon those in the lowest strata of society, from a moral or practical standpoint, it's not sustainable.

I wrote in my last post about the manufacturer's representative business. In this business, people that have been owners of rep firms for years are some of the least motivated people in the sales force. Since hey already have enough money and they have rigged the rules to make the majority of the money in their businesses no matter who sells the most, they don't need to work that hard. That doesn't stop them from expecting high compensation for little effort. Ultimately, they allow their businesses to drift, then expect to sell it at a high and go into retirement (as if that's much different than what they did in the last several years).

I think this is a symptom of your highest class of capitalists in this country as a whole. When was the last time you saw an oil company executive offer to build a new refinery in this country? This would even out shortages caused annually by refinery operational shutdowns and maintenance outages. The oil executives have no desire to do this because it would also lead to less volatile prices and less profits. When was the last time you heard about someone in the entrenched energy industry talk about capitalizing on any new form of energy? It's stupid and short sighted. These companies have all the pipelines, the distribution network, and capital to launch new products across all markets. If they had some foresight and got in front of the energy needs of the country instead of entrenching themselves, we would be in a much better position as a nation. I'm making two arguments here: first that the people with the most market motivation aren't making a very good bet based on where we know energy industry needs and capabilities will go, and second that free market profit motives are not adequate for steering society in the right direction.

My real fear is listening to people that talk about our future as if it doesn't matter to them. I've actually heard people say, "So what if the planet melts down? I'll be long gone by then." I wonder why the uber-rich feel the way they feel about money for the same reason. At some point, don't you just have to say, "I've got enough money to last the rest of my life no matter what I do. It's time to stop pushing for more."

The Age of Stagnation

I've had vague concerns that we are living in an era where America's dominance and position are slipping in the world. I've often pointed to the current administration's unfriendly stance toward science - but it's a lot more complicated that that.

The old model that America drove to prominence saw its heyday in the 1880's - The Age of Invention. Anybody with a good idea was developing it, patenting it, manufacturing it and making a fortune off of it. Most of the ideas that made people rich also benefited society. Think of Thomas Edison's light bulb and telephone.

One thing that is often true of innovation is that it displaces something that came before it. Many times the success of a new product meant the death of an old one. The maturation and solidification of our technologies into tried and true solutions is, in itself, a way to stifle innovation. Often those who have maneuvered themselves into a position to benefit from the way things are done now find it in their own selfish interest to suppress anything that threatens their dominance and source of income.

Many people have speculated that auto and oil companies conspired to keep fuel efficient engine designs off the market by buying ideas and sitting on them. I've never seen any proof for this, but it has been true that auto companies have resisted fuel standards for years. If it was a conspiracy - it was a suicidal conspiracy of fools. Ask your local car dealer how business is right now.

That's not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how someone without, someone in want, someone that lacks - will naturally strive much harder than someone that has all of their basic needs met.

I fear that in the environment we've built up in this country, using good ideas is more like playing musical chairs. When the music stops, you have to be sitting in a chair so someone else will be left out. Today's capitalists believe that you're not going to be rewarded for making the most out of any invention or development, but that the key is to get a patent for an idea or process and sit on it. Milking the most wealth possible out of an idea has become such an American past time that we graduate lawyers from universities just to specialize in patent law. The problem with this way of thinking is that ideas don't work best by bottling them up and placing them on a shelf, ideas work best in action. Ideas in action will necessarily be challenged and displaced by other ideas and forced to compete for prominence. These same capitalists that always trot out the excuse that "market forces" have to dominate any situation don't have the same standard when it comes to their ideas compete on an even footing. The desire to stifle other's ideas is not new. Even back during the Age of Invention, Edison tried to stop one of his brightest proteges, Nicolai Tesla, from developing an idea that would have displaced one of his biggest inventions, alternating current. And the Wright brothers tried to get a patent on flight and stifle all others that tried to make inventions or modifications to the airplane. Fortunately, they lost their battle with Curtis, and we now use flaps on wings instead of having large wings that warp and flex like a bird's wing - a construction that would have been extremely impractical on scale-up.

In the manufacturer's representative business - you always know who are the "mature" salesmen. Someone that has been successful for many years has usually gotten fat and lazy. They already have enough money. They don't want or need to work hard any more - but they still expect to be handsomely rewarded by virtue of their position. This is what I fear the capitalistic class in this country have become.

One thing is certain, expecting to continue to do things the way we have always is a formula for being left behind. In the Age of Invention, the first invention brought in money to fuel the development of the next thing. In our Age of Stagnation, coming up with a good idea once, or having the keys to the castle that contains the thing everyone wants is all it takes to be entitled to an uninterrupted stream of wealth. If that sounds like a fairy tale, it is.

Attractive Algae

Being a equipment nerd with a strong interest in how we make things, biofuels are of particular interest to me. The thought of growing our energy - thus using and then recapturing the CO2 in each growing cycle is attractive for many reasons.

However, ethanol's recent boom/bust cycle is a lesson in the limits of the first and easiest solution out of the box. It's often not the best solution.

You can argue the numbers, you can juggle the books to say that ethanol from grain is viable, but the recent rapid rise of grain prices makes it abundantly clear that the corn to ethanol scheme will not pan out.

The next idea is to distill fuel in the form of oil from an unlikely source: algae. Given the right supply of fuel (nutrients) and air (CO2 for plant), algae can double in mass daily. It is 50% lipids (oil) and could be processed easily into biodiesel with current techniques.

What is more beautiful is that the algae will need to consume another resource that is currently thought of as a waste - namely sewage. Whether from municipal or livestock sources, what to do with our sewage is a growing problem in the world. If algae works at all like duckweed (a plant that has been studied extensively) it may be able not only to purify water of its nitrogen content, but possibly other minerals. If the algae residue, after the oils are extracted, proves to be useful as a livestock feed - the cycle will be complete. It's unclear if the algae could consume a significant amount of CO2, but we could see a large algae plant bubbling power plant flue gasses into the water to feed the algae.

Watching the ethanol boom pass me by without being able to capitalize on the trend, I was speculating to my cousin about how great it would be to get in on the ground floor of the coming algae boom. I told him it would be great to develop a small system the size of a septic tank for individual home use. "Let's do it," was his immediate response. Someone is going to do it, I'm sure. I've got a pond full of duckweed, and the first step is playing with designing a skimmer to harvest the duckweed out of the pond. That's my homework project this summer. I'm not sure why I was convinced it wouldn't be me to develop the technology, but I'm willing to test the theory.

Bacteriophages

I was listening to the April 4th Science Friday Episode about Bacteriophages http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200804043.

These are viruses that kill a specific strain of bacteria. Work was done back in the early 1900's in Eastern Europe to cultivate them as a cure for certain diseases. This work was mostly forgotten over the years - particularly since the rise of antibiotics during WWII.

Since the antibiotic age seems to have come full circle, with many persistent strains of bacteria developing in response to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, interested individuals are looking again at this technology.

If a strain of bacteriophage can be found that exactly works on a resistant strain of bacteria, this would be a great discovery. The phages are said to be completely safe in humans - as they will only attack the specific infectious agent and not the body. The trick is finding the right strain. Companies are starting to submit phages for approval to the FDA, and some have gotten GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status.

The question I have is how do they propagate the phage once they find it? The guest on Science Friday talked about delivering it in pill, spray, or patch form, and warned that exposure to light would kill the phages. Is it hard to keep a strain alive and grow a commercially useful amount? How does it kill the bacteria? Once a person is infected with a phage, does it stay after it has killed all the bacteria it targets? Does your immune system possibly learn from the action of the phage and have some immunity to the bacteria after the phage treatment is over?

I wrote an entry on June 11, 2007 http://atresfreq.blogspot.com/2007/06/civil-war-immunity.html about my speculation that the Civil War soldiers were infected with so many strains of various bacteria in their disease-ridden camps that they had some kind of immunity that lasted the rest of their lives. The soldiers that survived the war lived in great numbers into their 90's. While it is also true that marching the long distances and all the physical exertions put them in incredible shape, that can't be all there was to it. It stands to reason that nasty diseases with high mortality rates would also be the perfect breeding ground for viruses that lived on those bacteria. So maybe exposure to those filthy camps also brought the antidote for the diseases in the form of phages that could develop and get a foothold in an environment rich with bacteria. Like any good mystery, you just have to keep turning the pages until the answers reveal themselves.

Friendship Expiration Date

My wife and I were getting a pizza for dinner the other night. When we went to a Papa John's in town, one we usually go. This store is where a high school friend of mine works. I mentioned this to Andrea and we talked about him. During the discussion that followed I stumbled on describing whether he was a friend or is a friend. I said, "There is no expiration date on friendship." This isn't always exactly true, but many times the people we call our friends remain friends (or at least friendly) even when we haven't seen them for years. You know the type, you see them after a long spell and it's as if the years between have dropped away. It's a mark of true friendship that the things that you liked about each other then are still true and still appealing to you. This story doesn't have a part where we got together and had a great time. Sometimes I worry about how life can get so busy that we just don't have or won't take the time to socialize. So my heartwarming revelation that there are all these latent friendships out there might ring a bit hollow. It doesn't matter - I find comfort in it nevertheless.

Spending Emotion

You can't be engaged in American Culture without being infected by it to some extent.

I've used AOL for years, since some time around 1995 or 1996, I think. Lately, they have a little news banner that is shown both before you sign in and after you sign in but before you check your mail. The content is such that the usual reaction is to click on it. If you do, you wish you hadn't and you find that the content is usually inane, boring, and empty of any importance or fulfilling information. It's like reading the National Enquirer or the World Weekly News. This suspicion was really brought home one day when I had checked my email and then went to the store. While standing in line at the store, I looked at the trash mags and tabloids. The headlines were the same. AOL = Trash Journalism.

Yet we all wade through this crap every day, and even if you do not seek it out, you will be exposed. You probably do know that Britney Spears and Kevin Federline are divorced and Britney is in melt down. You probably know that Lindsay Lohan is in rehab, that Paris Hilton went to jail, and that TomKat broke up.

Why? Not only why do you know, why did they spend so much time and effort making sure you know, but why do you care?

I was talking to a friend about the latest celebrity crisis and in exasperation told him that I wasn't willing to spend any emotion on the subject. I had never thought about spending emotion like money before, but we do. You can only choose to care about so many things, there is a limit.

My fear is that we spend so much time worrying about what's not really important that we don't spend enough time caring about what's important or who is important to us.

And by worrying about wasted worries, that's what I'm spending my emotions on.

Road Map to a Suicide

I was in a fraternity in college, and we had all these deep, dark secrets that you're never supposed to tell anyone about. You are supposed to take them to the grave. Enhanced interrogation techniques should never pry these stories out of your tortured breast.

Wanna hear one?

We had a ceremony that we enacted in December that was supposed to kick off the end of pledge training in the fall semester. This was back in the days that pledge training meant hazing, pure and simple. We heard about how much harder it was in the old days, and how much easier we had it than our fathers. Nowadays, there is no pledge training. Nothing much is required to get in, so I guess I sound like those people that used to tell me what a wimp I was for the pledge training I endured.

We called the week before Finals Week Dead Week. It was called Dead Week because you didn't do anything but study, and if you did attend class, they were just review sessions, no assignments. So, in the spirit of Dead Week, we had to dial back the intensity of pledge training for finals. So the Friday before Dead Week, we did an interesting thing. We kidnapped each of the pledges separately. We did it during study hours, so no one would be able to see the others being taken. Two actives would go up to the pledge and tell them to close their books and come with them. We took them down to the sleeping dorm and had them get a pillow case off their bed. Then we took them out to our car, handed them a bent dime, and had them put their pillowcase over their head and get in the back seat. We then took them out to some remote place, sometimes after driving for a long time, and assembled them together in a group, yanked off their hoods, and shouted "Surprise!" We gave them a bunch of beer and told them to have a party and have fun and when they came back, pledge training would be over. So you spend this tense hour or so thinking you're going to be dumped somewhere out in the countryside and you'll have to bash the dime out flat and walk a couple of miles to the nearest pay phone. Instead, you get released from PT (Pledge Training) torture and you get a party.

We all had it happen to us, and so we all enjoyed turning around and doing it to others. It was a fun story and a fun little trip. The year I was a junior, my cousin Jerry and I were asked to find the party location for the affair. We went up to Tuttle Creek Reservoir north of Manhattan (Kansas - we were at KSU) for a location. We found this place where a road ran into the lake from before the lake filled up. It was a parking lot, and there was the remnant of an old rock quarry right next to it, making the perfect party protection area. We drew a map up, made copies and distributed it to the Actives. Obviously, you were supposed to keep it away from the Pledges so as not to ruin the surprise, but someone left theirs out and it got stolen. The pledge that found it took a friend and followed the map one night right before the ceremony.

You have to put yourself in the Pledge's state of mind. They were being messed with and harassed constantly and this strange map had an unspoken promise of something unpleasant to come. So the night they followed the line on the map to the big X that it ended at, they did not know what to expect.

What they found was a dead body.

By some very strange coincidence, some guy decided to end it all right where the X marked the spot on the map, right before the Pledges went out to follow the map.

The freaked out, drove away, and anonymously phoned it in to the police. Then they spent the next few days quietly asking themselves "What the f***!?"

I found out about it the night of the ceremony when two of the Freshmen found out who drew the map and selected the spot and dragged Jerry and I out to the gravel parking lot to show us the spot. There was a dark stain on the ground where the guy landed and bled out.

That's the secret story and as wild as it sounds, it is 100% true.

Military Ethics

I went into the Army because I had an ROTC scholarship that paid for college. My father encouraged this, and I liked the idea when I was 18. I was offered Army, Air Force, Navy, & Marine scholarships, because in 1981 the memory of Viet Nam was fresh enough that recruiting was not easy. The scholarships were generous and easy to get. I was determined to go to Kansas State University because of family tradition, and because it was a good engineering school with plenty of women and a drinking age of 18. I wanted to be a jet pilot, but was told (erroneously, as it turns out) that I could not be a pilot and a scholarship recipient because that was too much money spend on one person. So that left Army ROTC.

I signed up after my application was accepted. Men's hair was still pretty long, a leftover from the 70's and mine was no exception, completely covering my ears, but not to my shoulders. I knew the Army would eventually make me get it cut short, but surprisingly, the standards were not strictly enforced and I was able to adopt a style that did not mark me or make me stand out.

LTC McCann was the Professor of Military Science (PMS - everything in the Army has acronyms, you soon learn). The Kansas State University (KSU - some things in the civilian world have acronyms, too) ROTC program had a outdoor adventure fun time image it was trying to project, so things were fun and lax for the first two years. We repelled off the side of the Old Stadium and learned map reading skills complete with weekend jaunts out to nearby Fort Riley to tromp around on the range doing the military equivalent of an Easter Egg hunt. It was in my Junior year that I finally had a Military Science core class, Leadership and Leaders, and finally saw LTC McCann as someone other than the "old man" that sat in his office smoking a pipe (or was it a cigar? MAJ Piper smoked the pipe).

Embedded in the leadership course was an ethics class. I can't remember whether LTC McCann taught the class or was a guest lecturer. As you can see, some of my memories are sketchy about this era. My memory of LTC McCann's story in this class is still crystal clear after all these years.

Young 2LT McCann served in Viet Nam when he entered the Army. He was in an Armor unit on the front line, in heavy combat. They occasionally lost equipment, either through normal wear and tear maintenance issues or in combat. His unit's inventory of tanks and APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers) had dwindled to the point that they were having difficulty completing missions, soldiers were fighting unprotected, they did not have the heavy support they wanted, and people were dying. They needed new vehicles, which finally arrived in country at some depot and had to be picked up. Their requisitions and paperwork in hand, young LT McCann went to the depot and presented his paperwork to them to pick up his new tanks and APCs. Unfortunately, the paperwork listed vehicles specifically by their serial numbers, and they were not in the depot. Feeling despondent, he left the offices and wandered out to the new equipment lined up in the yard. He saw all the tanks and APC styles they were due represented in the yard, and it occurred to him that it wasn't right or fair.

He went around and took down some serial numbers of vehicles that were parked in the yard, awaiting distribution or pick-up. He took his requisition paperwork and erased the serial numbers on them and put the numbers he found in the blanks. He must have waited for the personnel to change out before going back and submitting his new paperwork. He picked up all the equipment and moved the vehicles out of the depot and back to his unit.

He knew that taking those vehicles meant that other units that those tanks and APCs were meant to go to would probably struggle like they had been struggling. He even knew that his actions probably resulted in the deaths of people in those other units. He knew that by the book, by the letter of the rules, he had done something not permitted and wrong. He could probably have been reprimanded at the least, possibly court martialed at the worst. He knew he was wrong, but he told us that he never lost a night's sleep over his actions.

Whichever unit came up short of equipment would probably suffer additional casualties because of those shortages. In his mind, he said it wasn't a dilemma because if someone had to die, it was better that it was people in the other units rather than his. Was he playing God? Did he think his people were worth more than the others? That wasn't it. The difference between his soldiers and the soldiers in another unit is that he didn't have to watch them die.

Nightmare Scenario

Ignorance is Bliss.

That's what they say, but in reality, proceeding along in ignorance leads to anything but bliss. I heard about a study recently that was centered around the phenomenon of deception and one of the conclusions they came to was that some of the happiest people are people that lie to themselves. Those that tell themselves that they are fine and everything is fine and manage to convince themselves of this despite all evidence to the contrary are rewarded with not only happiness, but success. It's just another variation on the old Ignorance is Bliss adage.

I've always been a big fan of Science Fiction, so I've read a lot of it over the years. Many Science Fiction writers are engineers or scientists by training that went into writing because they spend a lot of time thinking about why things are the way they are and now things should be if we could just plan an orderly transition into the future. I like history, too, and I always thought that History and Science Fiction were perfect wings spreading out from the present. They answer the important questions of where have we been and where we are going. So many of the authors look at all the elements of what led up to this point and project a future based on what they know. That future is sometimes quite rosy, but often is the result of some really nasty times. The scary part of knowing a lot of these tales is that many of the story elements used in them are coming true.

A lot of storylines center around a crisis where the carrying capacity of the planet becomes outstripped by rising population. The scenarios differ in severity. Some hint at belt tightening, or new laws restricting freedoms in order to conserve food or energy or space. Others take the dire route and outline food riots and all-out war for survival. Technology plays various roles in future dramas, sometimes riding in to save the day, other times riding in as the pale horse of the apocalypse.

The stories I'm specifically thinking about while I write about this are Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, The Stand by Stephen King, Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge, the Foundation series by Arthur C. Clark, the ancient history outlined by the Dune series by Brian Herbert, the backstory for the Terminator series, and the "history" of our upcoming times outlined by Star Trek (mostly Next Generation, but Enterprise too). Numerous short stories and other books touch on the subject, too.

I've been watching the Ethanol Boom over the past few years and noticed the unpleasant effect of unintended consequences. Due to high energy prices and instability in the world, it finally makes sense to start trying to make our own energy out of mostly corn. Half way through the "boom" of dozens of plants going up everywhere, people started talking about the downside of the scheme to grow our energy. Corn prices started to rise dramatically. But what the heck, it's not a boom without something exploding, right? So suddenly the profit numbers for ethanol production start to drop. These plants were not put up with efficiency in mind, they were constructed with low capital cost in mind. Not only is it so expensive to produce a gallon of ethanol, but no one wants to distribute it or use it because it's not a lot less expensive than gasoline (especially when you look at cost per mile you can drive). Then people start realizing that these plants use a lot of water and water is not something that is in such abundant supply that you can use it indiscriminately and not worry. Next, you start to hear about corn that used to go into food production drying up and people having a hard time feeding their cattle. Food prices start to rise. The reports say the food prices are rising a lot, but it's hard to tell unless you actually watch what you pay for things. The program that used to pay farmers not to try to farm marginally croplands and put them to rest for wildlife buffers has seen farmers withdrawing land and putting it back into production at an incredible rate. Recent rises in corn prices have caused land equal to the area of Rhode Island and Delaware to be brought out of this idling program and into production.

I heard that some countries are cutting off any export of food since they are finding food scarce all of the sudden. I've also heard that food prices are rising even faster in some parts of the world, cutting poor people off from a large portion of their daily intake. There is talk about food riots, so far just talk. Asia & Africa are supposedly the worst place to be right now in that respect, but Mexico, surprisingly, was listed as a place where food prices have really outstripped people's buying power and shortages are being felt. Some reports say the cost of food has doubled in some areas of the world.

Gasoline prices, in the mean time, keep going up and people are starting to personally feel the pinch. I grew up in the late 70s and up until just recently, they have been saying that gasoline is not as expensive now when you adjust for inflation. That is no longer true. Now gas is more expensive than it has ever been. This is starting to alter people's behaviors somewhat. It's not making people drive less, it's making them buy less of other things in order to feed their hungry gas tanks.

After energy and food, Water is due to become the next crisis. It already is in some parts of the world. I've heard for years that water will be the next spark to set off war in the Middle East. Fixed supplies of water and an ever increasing population make this a certainty. We're starting to see much more desalination plants going in around the world. This is a great solution except for the fact that it uses a huge amount of energy. And looking to the oceans has its limits, too. You may have heard about collapsing fish stocks due to overfishing, increasing dead zones near river deltas, and growing amounts of trash in our oceans.

So there are all these warning signs that a rough road is ahead of us. We've managed to curb widespread wars and learned to beat back many diseases, so our population isn't getting thinned out like it used to. We recognize a need for population control when it comes to deer, and justify hunting as a necessary thinning of the herd. There is no season on humans.

One thing is sure, if you ignore all this, life is sweet. For some reason, I can look at all this and not feel despair. I think there is a point past being realistic where it stops being depressing. One thing certain about human society, it doesn't make any fundamental changes until it is forced to. I think all these things coming to a head are just a wake up call that will force us to act. What we really need is a combination of solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, and fusion energy to power our growing energy needs. All these sources will have the added benefit of being clean as well as being renewable There is a place for biofuels, but more in the form of algae grown from our own wastewater than crops like corn. We'll have to learn to recycle our own waste back into drinking water. They have to do it in space, because space is a closed system, and Earth is too. We could afford to ignore that fact when our numbers were small, but there are enough of us now that there's no frontier or open space for us to move into. The days of the nomad or frontiersman are over. We'll have to learn to preserve the plants and animals of the world, because many of our solutions will come from them, their genetic tricks designed by nature and hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And their health and prosperity will be an indicator of our success. So rather than being bummed out by these prospects, I'm encouraged. We have a job to do and a sense of purpose to spur us on. What more could you ask from life?

Sub Prime

All the activity next door makes me listen to the financial and economic news with a little bit different ear. It becomes more of a real problem when you see it happenning.

I will set aside for a moment the reports that the "Credit Crisis" is sending ripples through the economy at large, causing our economy to falter and possibly sending us into a recession. That doesn't seem possible, but I'm no expert. For me personally, business is better right now than it has been in 9 years.

This all started when some financial geniuses decided that the "sub-prime" market was ripe. My understanding of the term "sub-prime" is that people that have crappy credit ratings and no money for down payments are eligible for these loans, and nothing better. So some greedy corporate schemers rubbed their hands together and devised their plan to make billions in profit. They hatched their plan into the perfect environment. The stock market had underperformed, and people were looking for the next good place to invest their money. They knew that the government enviroment nowadays is geared toward leaving corporations alone when they aren't writing legislation to specifically benefit them or removing regulatory hurdles. Bush is pro-business, everyone believes. So they geared up some new "products" - loans custom made for unsophisticated borrowers with bad credit, and they flooded the country with one of the most aggressive ad campaigns seen in years. I'm sure you've seen all the stupid banner ads with people dancing spastically, saying "Interest rates are going down again!" and "You're eligible for a home loan!"

So they got these poor saps to sign fat contracts for loans with a fatal flaw embedded in them. Sign up and your payment is x per month, but after about a year it becomes almost 2x per month. "My house payment went up and we can't afford it!" was the common cry that went up all over the land. "Stupid people got in over their heads," was the callous comment heard most often around the water cooler.

I disagree. A complete lack of regulatory oversight as well as sheer stupidity on the part of the lenders is the problem here. If you're approving someone for a loan, you know how much they make. If you slip a provision that jacks up the payments after a year, you could probably do the math and figure out that they won't be able to pay and that it's a bad investment. Lack of regulations lets you hook in people without even making them come up with a down payment. So even if your plan was to set up people for failure and then take possession of their homes, it's still a bad plan, because you're not even going to profit from their down payments.

Then the perfect storm happend to make this into a full blown crisis. Lots of people rushed to make these loans, they started going bad in huge numbers all at once, and the bottom fell out of the housing market. It takes a long time to sell a house right now, and you will never get the full price in today's market. So suddenly it's not a bunch of ignorant borrowers that are feeling the pinch, it's big banks.

What a fiasco. Imagine rich investment types, used to pulling in 6 and 7 digit incomes watching their net worth evaporate away in a matter of months. These are the type people that used to fund political campaigns, so is it any wonder that they are also the people with access to power and influence? So who gets the first big bail out? Bear Stearns, an investment bank with some of the bluest of the blue bloods gets access to a line of credit to stabilize it while it is on life support. I have no doubt that the other lenders that pushed us into this mess will get similar support and bailouts in the months to come.

Meanwhile, let's hope that the people that got fooled by these bad loans in the coming months can afford their rent if the economy does slip into a recession.

Masters of the Universe? Time will tell.