Dear Friends -
I'm having a crisis of confidence here. The Muse (meaning whatever intangible mental state it is which permits me to write easily) hasn't visited me in a couple of weeks. So, I haven't blogged, because I can't imagine that anything less than well thought out and cultivated will be acceptable.
I'm taking a long chance here by sharing the ordinary ploddings of my life for the past few days.
I've been in court a lot the past week. Last Wednesday, I had a case on the motion docket at the Supreme Court, a criminal case. I wasn't trial counsel (i.e., I'm not the poor bloke who lost the case in front of the jury), and my client is so pissed off at that guy he's a handful. (My client is also suspected of founding a site on Wordpress that was the most libelous bunch of tripe I've ever seen, libeling the prosecutor, his trial lawyer and the Judge. He denies that he did it.) As I expected, I had a nasty argument with the Justice on the Court who never finds in favor of criminal defendants. My case was accepted 3-2, so the next thing will be to write a brief. I've kept researching, and my brief will be better than my petition. Then on Thursday, I had another case in Charleston (which is about 140 miles from home) at the Workers' Compensation Board of Review. I drove a bit over 2 hours each way (in really nasty weather, and I drive too fast), had the case which was dead last on a 50 case docket, so I waited for 3 hours for my case to be called. My opponent gave a short presentation, and then it was my turn. I agreed with a fact that my opponent alleged (because it was true) and after ONE FUCKING SENTENCE, the Board ruled against me. I said with a smile that "I've been thrown out of much nicer places than this," which they took as a joke. That was the height of lying - telling the absolute truth in a way that you won't be taken seriously.
The weekend was about normal. Saturday, I took off, and puttered and read. I've several books going right now, and I'm trying to finish some so I'm not lugging so many around. Sunday, I worked as usual. We represent real people, and real people have jobs that keep them busy Monday through Friday, so I had lots of clients come to the offices (which I think of as "chambers".) One of them is a woman for whom I have a sentencing next week in an adjoining county, and I'm super worried about that. Her husband was a very smart, manipulative pervert, and ran a very weird household which resulted in serious criminal charges. The husband was sentenced last week to 15 - 40 years in the state penitentiary. This guy touted his 180 IQ, and the participants in the justice system are honestly amused when someone like that finds out that the people in the Courthouse aren't stupid. Well, lawyers are from Mars, and we have weird senses of humor. (Not as bad as EMS workers' senses of humor, just ask Rox.) I went in at 9 AM and left at 9 PM, and felt that I accomplished a lot of stuff. That helps me feel good and worthwhile.
Monday, I had an all-day hearing with my buddy, a Family Court Judge. I've noted earlier my relationship with him, which is nearly multiple personality disorder on both of our parts. In Court, we are totally correct, and the fact that I know him has zero effect on how he treats me in Court or treats my clients in his rulings. Indeed, he frequently pisses me off with his rulings, which is OK, since I frequently piss him off with my arguments. At the end of the hearing, he requested "Proposed Findings," which means that this week I have to find the time to write a proposed court order. That's a pain in the ass, but in a hearing which has stretched out to more than one day spread over a few months, it's really, really necessary. We knocked off early, and he and I adjourned to the cafe across the street, where we tried to solve the upcoming issues with the Boy Scout Council, on which we serve together. (Of those problems, more on another day, perhaps.) Contrary to popular belief, not a word passes between lawyers and judges who know each other about cases that haven't yet been decided. I have another 1/2 day hearing before the same judge tomorrow. I don't know how that case will come out, but I'm totally ready for the hearing. The other lawyer was once a student of mine in college, and she will come loaded for bear. Last week at a bar meeting, I made a faux pass at her, telling her that I'd sweep her off her feet if I weren't married, which was true, and which she genuinely enjoyed.
Thursday is clients all day. Friday is 1/2 day of paper work, and a regular doctor appointment in the afternoon. The doctor's office is right beside Starbucks, and we don't have many of those.
This weekend, my wife and son will be out of town. On Saturday night, I'm going to a Masonic lodge meeting. One of the brothers there (yes, we really do address each other that way) is a lawyer who has been of enormous help to me and my partner as we work through some practice problems lately, and so my partner and I got and suitably inscribed a book, What Law There Was, by Al Dempsey, as a little token. (It's a western about how Masons banded together to bring law & order to the Montana territory.) I plan to give it to him during the meeting. I like to do stuff like that. Years ago, at a Boy Scout recognition dinner (where the volunteer adult leaders are recognized for busting their asses for years in the movement), I awarded a "Silver Beaver Award", which is a big deal, just ask Pete, to a minister who had spent the last night of my Dad's life at his bedside. The medal I hung on him was a little worn, because it was the same one which had been awarded to my Dad exactly 25 years before. Public recognition and thanks costs sooooooo little and means sooooooo much to people. With a laser printer, some $10 a box parchment paper, some clip art, and a $4 frame from Wal-Mart, you can create something that people will feel really good about.
And Sunday will be a work day, and the wheel turns again. Pippa passes.
By the way, I got that digital camera, and I need to find the time to see if the thing works and see if I am marginally smart enough to get pictures posted here.
Hope this wasn't too dull.
Mizpah!
R
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Friday, January 19, 2007
God, Guns and Guts
Dear Friends -
Several threads in the community blog lately have touched on the American obsession with firearms. These are some of my thoughts.
I just finished a book called Republican Like Me: Infiltrating Red-State, White-Ass, and Blue-Suit America by Harmon Leon. This guy is more liberal than I am by far, and that takes some doing. Anyway, he states (without citation) a statistic that a firearm in the home is 43 times more likely to injure or kill the homeowner, family member or guest in the home than a dangerous intruder. That sounds a little exaggerated to me, but I bet it's half that, anyway. Dedicated anti-gun people use that sort of statistic to conclude that civilians shouldn't possess firearms.
The whole issue of guns baffles me. Really. My beliefs are inconsistent. I have a lot of concern about the proliferation of guns in society. But I think I should have all I want. OK, that's selfish and inconsistent. But it's how I feel.
I was raised around guns. I first started shooting about age 6 or 7. I owned my first gun (a .22 Remington single shot rifle) at age 10. Over the years, I just kept acquiring guns. That is, until a new love talked me into selling many of them. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Love is fleeting. A good gun lasts a long time. I'm still in the process of replacing them, finding just exactly the guns I want.
I've carried guns, legally and illegally. Years ago, I was involved in a case featuring the "Avengers," a white-power, violent prison-based gang. At that time, it was impossible as a practical matter to get a gun permit in our county. The chief judge was on the bench for 45 years, and in that time issued only one gun permit. So, for a number of weeks, I broke the law by carrying a pistol either on my person, or in the fairing of my motorcycle. (It was a grueling case - late at night, when I was too fried to keep working, I would take long, fast bike rides in the hot night to unwind.) There were a few scattered occasions in the following years that I would carry a gun, but basically simply kept guns at home and the office. Lots of guns. Whenever I was at the farm, I was armed - not for fear of any animals in the woods other than humans - the farm is pretty far out, and there are just some nasty-ass people in this world.
Then came the West Virginia Supreme Court case of State ex rel. City of Princeton v. Buckner, 377 S.E.2d 139 (W. Va. 1988). (Sorry, don't mean to sound snooty-technical, that's just the way that written court opinions are cited, by book and page.) I know a lot about that case, because I was "local counsel" for the National Rifle Association. ("Local counsel" is required when an out-of-state lawyer files a case in West Virginia, so that there is someone with a West Virginia license who signs the documents.) At that time, I had done a good many appeals, so I participated in a minor way in actually preparing the briefs, and I am the one who argued the case before the Court. The Court's decision was that a new state constitutional amendment had pre-empted the existing laws concerning carrying firearms, and bounced the question to the Legislature to design a system that would be constitutional. The system the Legislature established made it reasonably easy to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon. (After the constitutional amendment, it was legal to carry a gun openly without a permit.) I was handling some other cases involving dangerous people again (including a motorcycle gang known as the Pagans), so I got a permit to carry concealed. I was required to take a gun-handling/safety course, which was absolutely insufficient to teach someone who has not handled guns to do so safely. I continued to carry a gun only when I felt an increased threat, and was comfortable in doing so. No, that's not exactly right - you can no more be "comfortable" with a gun than you can be comfortable with a chain saw. They are just too damn dangerous.
I like guns, and I like shooting. My ideal carry piece is a 1911 pattern .45 automatic. It's called "1911" because that's the year the Army adopted it, so it's a weapon that has been virtually unchanged for about 100 years. There are lots of accessories available on eBay for it. So sue me, I'm a traditionalist.
But keeping a gun is a burden and a trust. Christ, as I write this, there is an episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger" playing on the TV to fill the room with some noise. In the scene just on, two guys shooting fully automatic weapons (submachine guns, in other words) at the Rangers who are out in the open, and missing; and the Rangers firing one shot apiece and killing the bad guys. This is warped, this is one of the reasons that kids and young adults think it's cool and trendy to run around armed. Where was I? Yes, a trust. You have to know your limitations. You have to keep your guns locked up. There are special boxes with shrouded or touch-only combination locks that provide good security and not-unreasonable access. If you don't live and teach gun safety, you have no damn business with a gun, and you are one of the creators of the unfortunate statistics. One of the saddest gun stories I know (that is, saddest without someone getting shot) is from when my grandfather and his brother went squirrel hunting for the last time, with shotguns. They each took an easy shot at a squirrel and missed. Without a word, they went back home, and never went hunting again. They knew their limitations.
I'm not in favor of anyone who has the slightest reservation getting a gun of any sort.
Mizpah.
Straight-shooting,
R
(P.S. - My wife is a much better shot than I am. Go figure.)
Several threads in the community blog lately have touched on the American obsession with firearms. These are some of my thoughts.
I just finished a book called Republican Like Me: Infiltrating Red-State, White-Ass, and Blue-Suit America by Harmon Leon. This guy is more liberal than I am by far, and that takes some doing. Anyway, he states (without citation) a statistic that a firearm in the home is 43 times more likely to injure or kill the homeowner, family member or guest in the home than a dangerous intruder. That sounds a little exaggerated to me, but I bet it's half that, anyway. Dedicated anti-gun people use that sort of statistic to conclude that civilians shouldn't possess firearms.
The whole issue of guns baffles me. Really. My beliefs are inconsistent. I have a lot of concern about the proliferation of guns in society. But I think I should have all I want. OK, that's selfish and inconsistent. But it's how I feel.
I was raised around guns. I first started shooting about age 6 or 7. I owned my first gun (a .22 Remington single shot rifle) at age 10. Over the years, I just kept acquiring guns. That is, until a new love talked me into selling many of them. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Love is fleeting. A good gun lasts a long time. I'm still in the process of replacing them, finding just exactly the guns I want.
I've carried guns, legally and illegally. Years ago, I was involved in a case featuring the "Avengers," a white-power, violent prison-based gang. At that time, it was impossible as a practical matter to get a gun permit in our county. The chief judge was on the bench for 45 years, and in that time issued only one gun permit. So, for a number of weeks, I broke the law by carrying a pistol either on my person, or in the fairing of my motorcycle. (It was a grueling case - late at night, when I was too fried to keep working, I would take long, fast bike rides in the hot night to unwind.) There were a few scattered occasions in the following years that I would carry a gun, but basically simply kept guns at home and the office. Lots of guns. Whenever I was at the farm, I was armed - not for fear of any animals in the woods other than humans - the farm is pretty far out, and there are just some nasty-ass people in this world.
Then came the West Virginia Supreme Court case of State ex rel. City of Princeton v. Buckner, 377 S.E.2d 139 (W. Va. 1988). (Sorry, don't mean to sound snooty-technical, that's just the way that written court opinions are cited, by book and page.) I know a lot about that case, because I was "local counsel" for the National Rifle Association. ("Local counsel" is required when an out-of-state lawyer files a case in West Virginia, so that there is someone with a West Virginia license who signs the documents.) At that time, I had done a good many appeals, so I participated in a minor way in actually preparing the briefs, and I am the one who argued the case before the Court. The Court's decision was that a new state constitutional amendment had pre-empted the existing laws concerning carrying firearms, and bounced the question to the Legislature to design a system that would be constitutional. The system the Legislature established made it reasonably easy to obtain a permit to carry a concealed weapon. (After the constitutional amendment, it was legal to carry a gun openly without a permit.) I was handling some other cases involving dangerous people again (including a motorcycle gang known as the Pagans), so I got a permit to carry concealed. I was required to take a gun-handling/safety course, which was absolutely insufficient to teach someone who has not handled guns to do so safely. I continued to carry a gun only when I felt an increased threat, and was comfortable in doing so. No, that's not exactly right - you can no more be "comfortable" with a gun than you can be comfortable with a chain saw. They are just too damn dangerous.
I like guns, and I like shooting. My ideal carry piece is a 1911 pattern .45 automatic. It's called "1911" because that's the year the Army adopted it, so it's a weapon that has been virtually unchanged for about 100 years. There are lots of accessories available on eBay for it. So sue me, I'm a traditionalist.
But keeping a gun is a burden and a trust. Christ, as I write this, there is an episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger" playing on the TV to fill the room with some noise. In the scene just on, two guys shooting fully automatic weapons (submachine guns, in other words) at the Rangers who are out in the open, and missing; and the Rangers firing one shot apiece and killing the bad guys. This is warped, this is one of the reasons that kids and young adults think it's cool and trendy to run around armed. Where was I? Yes, a trust. You have to know your limitations. You have to keep your guns locked up. There are special boxes with shrouded or touch-only combination locks that provide good security and not-unreasonable access. If you don't live and teach gun safety, you have no damn business with a gun, and you are one of the creators of the unfortunate statistics. One of the saddest gun stories I know (that is, saddest without someone getting shot) is from when my grandfather and his brother went squirrel hunting for the last time, with shotguns. They each took an easy shot at a squirrel and missed. Without a word, they went back home, and never went hunting again. They knew their limitations.
I'm not in favor of anyone who has the slightest reservation getting a gun of any sort.
Mizpah.
Straight-shooting,
R
(P.S. - My wife is a much better shot than I am. Go figure.)
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
A little poem
In another Shelfer's blog, there was an entry that reminded me of a little poem. This was given to me by a dear friend, a guy named Fred Griffith, a crotchety former police officer, a lodge brother, and recently deceased. The poem goes like this:
Take a bucket of water.
Put your hand in it up to the wrist.
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining
Is a measure of how much you'd be missed.
You can stir up the water with gusto,
You can stir up the water galore.
But pull it out and the hole that's remaininng
Is the same as it was before.
Now the moral of this quaint example
Is "Do the best that you can.
"Take good care of yourself, but remember
"There is no indispensible man."
Don't know why this was on my mind, but just wanted to share.
Mizpah.
R
Take a bucket of water.
Put your hand in it up to the wrist.
Pull it out and the hole that's remaining
Is a measure of how much you'd be missed.
You can stir up the water with gusto,
You can stir up the water galore.
But pull it out and the hole that's remaininng
Is the same as it was before.
Now the moral of this quaint example
Is "Do the best that you can.
"Take good care of yourself, but remember
"There is no indispensible man."
Don't know why this was on my mind, but just wanted to share.
Mizpah.
R
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Ranting, ranting - or is it?
Dear Friends -
Rule of Writing Number One - Keep it focused, and tight.
Personal foul! Elu! Ranting and rambling! Fifteen yard penalty, repeat first down!
Topics in the community blog have been percolating in my mind, as well as other society-wide issues. This is out of character for what I have wanted this blog to be - but maybe not, maybe I want it to be a mixed bag - like me.
Topics for tonight: Imperialism; Energy; Climate change and conservation; Science and Religion
There is an old Gospel hymn I remember from my youth - "I Wonder as I Wander." I'm thinking of that tonight.
I wonder as I wander - I wander into national policy, and what do I find? Imperialism -
My country has invaded a sovereign nation in the Middle East. The excuse was that this nation, Iraq, had weapons of mass destruction. Mind you, the Administration never claimed that Iraq had delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction such that they would threaten America. So why did we invade this sovereign country? Because it had an evil dictator? We didn't invade Germany between 1933 and 1941, Hitler; North Korea after 1953, Kim Il Sung, then Kim Jong Il; China ever, Mao Zedong; Argentina ever, Juan Peron; Chile ever, Pinochet; the Soviet Union ever, Stalin, Andropov and company; and so forth. So I can't believe the party line that Saddam was so bad that his absence was worth the lives of 3,000 Americans and 600,000 Iraqis. Besides, if he were that bad, slipping a sniper in might have been a little cheaper in the costs that matter. And the other costs, too. OK, maybe we invaded because we wanted to bring the blessings of democracy to Iraq. But we staged the invasion from bases in Saudi Arabia, and while we were there we didn't bring that nation the blessings of liberty - the House of Saud with it's legion of crown princes, etc., still has a strangle hold on that country. Maybe it was because of oil - but we bend over for the Saudis and Kuwaitis and Nigerians and Venezuelans and Mexicans, so the oil in Iraq doesn't seem to be critical. OK, here's a reason, and it's the truth - George Bush and Dick Cheney are the biggest and baddest motherfuckers on the planet, and they are going to kick some camel jockey ass and go down in history as the American Caesars. And if that means we kill a few thousand here and there, theirs, ours, fuck it, whoever, well, they have died for the glory of America, so their mamas and papas should wipe off their tears, take the triangularly folded flag, and bless this beloved land with a smile on their faces and a song in their hearts. As for the maimed, that's what VA Hospitals are for, no sweat.
And I wonder - Doesn't anybody care?
I wonder as I wander. I wander through the streets of my town on a winter evening. What do I find? Issues of Energy -
Our children's children are going to curse us. The United States, with 5% of the world population, uses one-quarter of the oil production of the world right now. We are energy pigs. Look out at your town or city tonight. What do you see? Light everywhere, that's what. Sixty-five percent of American electricity is produced with fossil fuels. Look around you, what do you see? Plastics, everywhere. Almost all plastic uses crude oil products as their raw material. Drive down the road, and what do you see? Hundreds upon thousands of your fellow citizens joining you in inefficiently (gasoline produces power at around 40% efficiency) moving 4,000 pounds of metal to get 200 pounds of person somewhere they don't need to go anyway. Oh, and the metal - our society is based on metal - steel and aluminum, particularly. It takes enormous amounts of heat - primarily from fossil fuels - to produce useable metals.
The last great oil fields have been found, and developed. (What about the ANWR - The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - That is a footnote in world energy. It contains enough crude oil to supply American needs for less than two years, at the expense of permanently damaging a fragile ecosystem - For instance, the moss which grows there takes more than 100 years to recover from the passage of one light vehicle.) Oil production will peak around 2010. It is virtually certain that crude oil production will be severely curtailed by the end of this century. That will eliminate the primary energy source, and an essential chemical resource upon which the plastics industry depends. (No replacement energy source will fulfill the chemical industry's needs, so we will likely be restricting crude oil to chemical uses toward the end of the production.) Coal reserves arguably will last for 255 years. However, the standard years-of-reserves estimates keep getting shorter. In 1904, there were coal reserves for 1000 years; in 1988, 300 years. And then? We are assuming that some sort of miraculous invention will bail us out. Hey, Gary Larsen did cartoon jokes about this, how scientists writing formulae on a blackboard would stick in the middle of the equation, "Here, a Miracle occurs." What is that miracle going to be? Solar? Solar is very inefficient (18%), and most of the United States has insufficient sunny days to depend on solar anyway. Geothermal? Thermal sources near the surface are very rare, at least with the heat it takes to produce electricity. Drilling technology is nowhere near developed enough to drill deeply enough to find real heat, "several miles" for some deposits, and much, much deeper to find truly hot magma in usable quantity. Hydrogen? That's a cop out. Hydrogen takes electricity from other sources to produce. Nuclear? We are running short of uranium, too. All of the products of reactors that in turn fuel other reactors come from uranium. Current estimates say that known uranium deposits will be depleted by 2060. Wind? Inefficient in the extreme, and currently produces 0.6% of electricity in the U.S. Ah, fusion, the Miracle that will occur. If only we develop a material or energy which will contain a reaction that burns at 730 million degrees Celsius, and a way to start that reaction, and a way to tap the heat of that reaction. Or maybe NOTHING. Maybe, just maybe, we will have a great "Power Down" event. With the power down will go huge disruption in food production and a die-off of lots and lots of humans.
And I wonder - Doesn't anybody care?
I wonder as I wander. I wander onto websites and research reports of the majority of qualified climate scientists. What do I find? Issues of Climate change and conservation -
The same scientists who predicted an upcoming Ice Age 15 years ago now predict global warming. That's both true and logically uncompelling to the point of the right-wing argument that climate change is a problem.
One particularly dumbshit article I read (I cruise all sorts of fringe sites) was that global warming is a good thing because it will make the plains of northern Canada and northern Russia the new breadbaskets of the world. There are two problems with that. First, the soil there is thin and incompatible with large-scale agriculture. Second, I suppose the writer of that thinks it's OK that tropical and sub-tropical latitudes become overheated Hells, and mid-latitudes (like the American Mid-west) the new deserts.
The Arctic ice-cover is melting. Within our lifetimes, it will be possible to sail a surface ship across the North Pole. Huge ice shelves have broken off the glaciers of Antarctica. One result of these events is that vast quantities of fresh water are being and will be dumped into the ocean. This will raise the sea level, and disturb the salinity of the oceans, upon which sea life depends. Sea life includes phytoplankton, which is a major resource for atmospheric oxygen, and the major dumping ground for excess carbon. When surface waters are cold, nutrients which feed phytoplankton come to the surface. When surface waters are warm, the nutrients from below are blocked, and there is a large die-off of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton forms the vast majority of the dead biomass at the bottom of the ocean, which binds 90% of the world's carbon content.
We continue to dump billions of tons of carbon per year into the atmosphere. In 1900, atmospherica carbon measured at Mauna Loa in Hawaii was 295 ppm (parts per million); in 1997, 360 ppm. The rate of destruction of the forests, another major "carbon sink" is increasing. Currently, 53,000 square miles of forest are lost every year. That's about the size of North Carolina. The industrial powers of the world made a baby step with the Kyoto Accords. The United States signed them, changed the party of the Administration, and abrogated them.
We are heading for the climate cliff. Once we fall off, we aren't going to levitate back to the edge.
And I wonder - Doesn't anybody care?
I wonder as I wander. I wander to the most local of government meetings, the local school board. What do I find? Science is perverted in the name of religion -
School boards cite the "controversy" of Evolution versus Creation. They want to place stickers in science textbooks to urge students to examine the "evidence" that says that evolution didn't occur, and that the Earth is about 4,000 years old. Teachers, teachers I know who have been to college, refuse to teach evolution, or any part of geology which differs with the account of creation in Genesis. The government won't let park rangers at the Grand Canyon state that the geological record shows erosion of the canyon by the Colorado River over something in the order of five million years, with most of the downcutting occuring in the last two million years. They are encouraged to speculate that the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's Flood.
God is important to me. He created this Earth. He did so using wonderful mechanisms that science can detect and measure. But because the scientific evidence differs from the stories told to simple people when the Bible was written, we are dumbing down America.
And I wonder - Doesn't anybody care?
Doesn't anybody care?
Perhaps I'll write with less (righteous?) anger and more focus on these individual issues later. I'm just very frustrated and very worried tonight about our America. I was a flag-waver way before flag-waving was cool. It pains me that we are descending into a society of arrogance and stupidity.
Mizpah. (See Genesis 31:49)
Roger
Rule of Writing Number One - Keep it focused, and tight.
Personal foul! Elu! Ranting and rambling! Fifteen yard penalty, repeat first down!
Topics in the community blog have been percolating in my mind, as well as other society-wide issues. This is out of character for what I have wanted this blog to be - but maybe not, maybe I want it to be a mixed bag - like me.
Topics for tonight: Imperialism; Energy; Climate change and conservation; Science and Religion
There is an old Gospel hymn I remember from my youth - "I Wonder as I Wander." I'm thinking of that tonight.
I wonder as I wander - I wander into national policy, and what do I find? Imperialism -
My country has invaded a sovereign nation in the Middle East. The excuse was that this nation, Iraq, had weapons of mass destruction. Mind you, the Administration never claimed that Iraq had delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction such that they would threaten America. So why did we invade this sovereign country? Because it had an evil dictator? We didn't invade Germany between 1933 and 1941, Hitler; North Korea after 1953, Kim Il Sung, then Kim Jong Il; China ever, Mao Zedong; Argentina ever, Juan Peron; Chile ever, Pinochet; the Soviet Union ever, Stalin, Andropov and company; and so forth. So I can't believe the party line that Saddam was so bad that his absence was worth the lives of 3,000 Americans and 600,000 Iraqis. Besides, if he were that bad, slipping a sniper in might have been a little cheaper in the costs that matter. And the other costs, too. OK, maybe we invaded because we wanted to bring the blessings of democracy to Iraq. But we staged the invasion from bases in Saudi Arabia, and while we were there we didn't bring that nation the blessings of liberty - the House of Saud with it's legion of crown princes, etc., still has a strangle hold on that country. Maybe it was because of oil - but we bend over for the Saudis and Kuwaitis and Nigerians and Venezuelans and Mexicans, so the oil in Iraq doesn't seem to be critical. OK, here's a reason, and it's the truth - George Bush and Dick Cheney are the biggest and baddest motherfuckers on the planet, and they are going to kick some camel jockey ass and go down in history as the American Caesars. And if that means we kill a few thousand here and there, theirs, ours, fuck it, whoever, well, they have died for the glory of America, so their mamas and papas should wipe off their tears, take the triangularly folded flag, and bless this beloved land with a smile on their faces and a song in their hearts. As for the maimed, that's what VA Hospitals are for, no sweat.
And I wonder - Doesn't anybody care?
I wonder as I wander. I wander through the streets of my town on a winter evening. What do I find? Issues of Energy -
Our children's children are going to curse us. The United States, with 5% of the world population, uses one-quarter of the oil production of the world right now. We are energy pigs. Look out at your town or city tonight. What do you see? Light everywhere, that's what. Sixty-five percent of American electricity is produced with fossil fuels. Look around you, what do you see? Plastics, everywhere. Almost all plastic uses crude oil products as their raw material. Drive down the road, and what do you see? Hundreds upon thousands of your fellow citizens joining you in inefficiently (gasoline produces power at around 40% efficiency) moving 4,000 pounds of metal to get 200 pounds of person somewhere they don't need to go anyway. Oh, and the metal - our society is based on metal - steel and aluminum, particularly. It takes enormous amounts of heat - primarily from fossil fuels - to produce useable metals.
The last great oil fields have been found, and developed. (What about the ANWR - The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - That is a footnote in world energy. It contains enough crude oil to supply American needs for less than two years, at the expense of permanently damaging a fragile ecosystem - For instance, the moss which grows there takes more than 100 years to recover from the passage of one light vehicle.) Oil production will peak around 2010. It is virtually certain that crude oil production will be severely curtailed by the end of this century. That will eliminate the primary energy source, and an essential chemical resource upon which the plastics industry depends. (No replacement energy source will fulfill the chemical industry's needs, so we will likely be restricting crude oil to chemical uses toward the end of the production.) Coal reserves arguably will last for 255 years. However, the standard years-of-reserves estimates keep getting shorter. In 1904, there were coal reserves for 1000 years; in 1988, 300 years. And then? We are assuming that some sort of miraculous invention will bail us out. Hey, Gary Larsen did cartoon jokes about this, how scientists writing formulae on a blackboard would stick in the middle of the equation, "Here, a Miracle occurs." What is that miracle going to be? Solar? Solar is very inefficient (18%), and most of the United States has insufficient sunny days to depend on solar anyway. Geothermal? Thermal sources near the surface are very rare, at least with the heat it takes to produce electricity. Drilling technology is nowhere near developed enough to drill deeply enough to find real heat, "several miles" for some deposits, and much, much deeper to find truly hot magma in usable quantity. Hydrogen? That's a cop out. Hydrogen takes electricity from other sources to produce. Nuclear? We are running short of uranium, too. All of the products of reactors that in turn fuel other reactors come from uranium. Current estimates say that known uranium deposits will be depleted by 2060. Wind? Inefficient in the extreme, and currently produces 0.6% of electricity in the U.S. Ah, fusion, the Miracle that will occur. If only we develop a material or energy which will contain a reaction that burns at 730 million degrees Celsius, and a way to start that reaction, and a way to tap the heat of that reaction. Or maybe NOTHING. Maybe, just maybe, we will have a great "Power Down" event. With the power down will go huge disruption in food production and a die-off of lots and lots of humans.
And I wonder - Doesn't anybody care?
I wonder as I wander. I wander onto websites and research reports of the majority of qualified climate scientists. What do I find? Issues of Climate change and conservation -
The same scientists who predicted an upcoming Ice Age 15 years ago now predict global warming. That's both true and logically uncompelling to the point of the right-wing argument that climate change is a problem.
One particularly dumbshit article I read (I cruise all sorts of fringe sites) was that global warming is a good thing because it will make the plains of northern Canada and northern Russia the new breadbaskets of the world. There are two problems with that. First, the soil there is thin and incompatible with large-scale agriculture. Second, I suppose the writer of that thinks it's OK that tropical and sub-tropical latitudes become overheated Hells, and mid-latitudes (like the American Mid-west) the new deserts.
The Arctic ice-cover is melting. Within our lifetimes, it will be possible to sail a surface ship across the North Pole. Huge ice shelves have broken off the glaciers of Antarctica. One result of these events is that vast quantities of fresh water are being and will be dumped into the ocean. This will raise the sea level, and disturb the salinity of the oceans, upon which sea life depends. Sea life includes phytoplankton, which is a major resource for atmospheric oxygen, and the major dumping ground for excess carbon. When surface waters are cold, nutrients which feed phytoplankton come to the surface. When surface waters are warm, the nutrients from below are blocked, and there is a large die-off of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton forms the vast majority of the dead biomass at the bottom of the ocean, which binds 90% of the world's carbon content.
We continue to dump billions of tons of carbon per year into the atmosphere. In 1900, atmospherica carbon measured at Mauna Loa in Hawaii was 295 ppm (parts per million); in 1997, 360 ppm. The rate of destruction of the forests, another major "carbon sink" is increasing. Currently, 53,000 square miles of forest are lost every year. That's about the size of North Carolina. The industrial powers of the world made a baby step with the Kyoto Accords. The United States signed them, changed the party of the Administration, and abrogated them.
We are heading for the climate cliff. Once we fall off, we aren't going to levitate back to the edge.
And I wonder - Doesn't anybody care?
I wonder as I wander. I wander to the most local of government meetings, the local school board. What do I find? Science is perverted in the name of religion -
School boards cite the "controversy" of Evolution versus Creation. They want to place stickers in science textbooks to urge students to examine the "evidence" that says that evolution didn't occur, and that the Earth is about 4,000 years old. Teachers, teachers I know who have been to college, refuse to teach evolution, or any part of geology which differs with the account of creation in Genesis. The government won't let park rangers at the Grand Canyon state that the geological record shows erosion of the canyon by the Colorado River over something in the order of five million years, with most of the downcutting occuring in the last two million years. They are encouraged to speculate that the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's Flood.
God is important to me. He created this Earth. He did so using wonderful mechanisms that science can detect and measure. But because the scientific evidence differs from the stories told to simple people when the Bible was written, we are dumbing down America.
And I wonder - Doesn't anybody care?
Doesn't anybody care?
Perhaps I'll write with less (righteous?) anger and more focus on these individual issues later. I'm just very frustrated and very worried tonight about our America. I was a flag-waver way before flag-waving was cool. It pains me that we are descending into a society of arrogance and stupidity.
Mizpah. (See Genesis 31:49)
Roger
Friday, January 12, 2007
Sunday, January 7, 2007
An Abridged Personal Canon of Recommended Books of 2006
Dear Friends -
My tastes run from treasure to trash. Some entries from the books of 2006:
Top recommendation:
Steve Leveen - The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life - This is a book about, of all things, reading. And I think that my enjoyment of books is a little richer by reading this.
Lawyer novels:
Paul Levine - Solomon vs. Lord
Paul Levine - The Deep Blue Alibi: A Solomon vs. Lord novel and
Paul Levine - Kill All the Lawyers: A Solomon vs. Lord novel - Irreverent, funny and unabashedly emotional - sorta like my self-image, but I know that I flatter myself.
John Grisham - The Broker - First Grisham I've read in YEARS, and almost as good as his early novels. (His later novels sucked, IMHO.)
Books about the justice system:
Steve Bogira - Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse
David Feige - Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey into the Inferno of American Justice
Both scary if you're a citizen who trusts our court systems. Remember the Law of Sausage? "Those who like sausage or respect the law should never watch either being made."
Contemporary fiction:
William Lashner - Falls the Shadow
Jeffrey Archer - False Impression - Archer is sanguine about his time in the penitentiary
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - The Book of the Dead
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - Still Life with Crows - These guys do a helluva read, and their characters are wonderful.
Obsessive subject:
Bill Quinn - How Wal-Mart is Destroying America
Charles Fishman - The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It’s Transforming the American Economy
John Dicker - The United States of WalMart
Anthony Bianco - The Bully of Bentonville: How the High Cost of Wal-Mart’s Everyday Low Prices is Hurting America
Wal-Mart is the big dog of the American economy. To understand the economy, it is helpful to understand them, and these books cover the spectrum of hate it to love it.
Difficult to categorize:
Michael S. Berman (with Laurence Shames) - Living Large - Non-fiction about a professional living as an obese person. Well, it's interesting to me.
History:
Richard Carwardine - Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power - So-so, but after you've read the one volume The Prairie Years and The War Years by Sandburg, there's not a hell of a lot more to say in a general bio. And if you read the six-volume version, the mind-numbing one, there is nothing else to add.
John F. Harris - The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House
Patricia O’Toole - When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House
H. W. Brands - Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
Edward Steers, Jr. - Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
James L. Swanson - Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer - The best book on the Lincoln Assassination I've ever read. Highly recommend.
Edward H. Bonekemper, III - A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant’s Overlooked Military Genius - A refreshing viewpoint, well documented.
David McCullough - 1776 - Well, everyone else was reading it too, so . . .
Political:
James Carville & Paul Begala - Take It Back: Our Party, Our Future, Our Country
David Sirota - Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government - And How We Can Take It Back - The best progressive book of the year, guaranteed to piss you off.
Sci-fi:
Ben Bova - The Precipice, The Rock Rats, The Silent War - More than mind candy, a moving and believable "near" science-fiction series.
Westerns:
Zane Grey - Riders of the Purple Sage - Always worth re-reading. The denouement is thrilling no matter how many times you read it.
Chuck Norris - The Justice Riders - A surprising entree into the Western genre.
Mizpah.
Roger
My tastes run from treasure to trash. Some entries from the books of 2006:
Top recommendation:
Steve Leveen - The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life - This is a book about, of all things, reading. And I think that my enjoyment of books is a little richer by reading this.
Lawyer novels:
Paul Levine - Solomon vs. Lord
Paul Levine - The Deep Blue Alibi: A Solomon vs. Lord novel and
Paul Levine - Kill All the Lawyers: A Solomon vs. Lord novel - Irreverent, funny and unabashedly emotional - sorta like my self-image, but I know that I flatter myself.
John Grisham - The Broker - First Grisham I've read in YEARS, and almost as good as his early novels. (His later novels sucked, IMHO.)
Books about the justice system:
Steve Bogira - Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse
David Feige - Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey into the Inferno of American Justice
Both scary if you're a citizen who trusts our court systems. Remember the Law of Sausage? "Those who like sausage or respect the law should never watch either being made."
Contemporary fiction:
William Lashner - Falls the Shadow
Jeffrey Archer - False Impression - Archer is sanguine about his time in the penitentiary
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - The Book of the Dead
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - Still Life with Crows - These guys do a helluva read, and their characters are wonderful.
Obsessive subject:
Bill Quinn - How Wal-Mart is Destroying America
Charles Fishman - The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It’s Transforming the American Economy
John Dicker - The United States of WalMart
Anthony Bianco - The Bully of Bentonville: How the High Cost of Wal-Mart’s Everyday Low Prices is Hurting America
Wal-Mart is the big dog of the American economy. To understand the economy, it is helpful to understand them, and these books cover the spectrum of hate it to love it.
Difficult to categorize:
Michael S. Berman (with Laurence Shames) - Living Large - Non-fiction about a professional living as an obese person. Well, it's interesting to me.
History:
Richard Carwardine - Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power - So-so, but after you've read the one volume The Prairie Years and The War Years by Sandburg, there's not a hell of a lot more to say in a general bio. And if you read the six-volume version, the mind-numbing one, there is nothing else to add.
John F. Harris - The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House
Patricia O’Toole - When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House
H. W. Brands - Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
Edward Steers, Jr. - Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
James L. Swanson - Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer - The best book on the Lincoln Assassination I've ever read. Highly recommend.
Edward H. Bonekemper, III - A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant’s Overlooked Military Genius - A refreshing viewpoint, well documented.
David McCullough - 1776 - Well, everyone else was reading it too, so . . .
Political:
James Carville & Paul Begala - Take It Back: Our Party, Our Future, Our Country
David Sirota - Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government - And How We Can Take It Back - The best progressive book of the year, guaranteed to piss you off.
Sci-fi:
Ben Bova - The Precipice, The Rock Rats, The Silent War - More than mind candy, a moving and believable "near" science-fiction series.
Westerns:
Zane Grey - Riders of the Purple Sage - Always worth re-reading. The denouement is thrilling no matter how many times you read it.
Chuck Norris - The Justice Riders - A surprising entree into the Western genre.
Mizpah.
Roger
Friday, January 5, 2007
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