The Quintessential Intellectual

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, collections, essays, science, society, opinion

As much Physics as I studied, and as much as I have studied and pondered Relativity, both the Special and General theories, I realized I had never read more than a few lines by Einstein himself. When I saw Ideas and Opinions, a collection of essays and letters by Albert Einstein, I just had to snatch it up. The book is based on Mein Weltbild (My Worldview), edited by Carl Seelig, with a great deal of other material Einstein wrote after that book was published in 1934. Most of the material written before 1935 was in German and appears here in translation, mostly by Sonja Bargmann.

The greatest number of portions of My Worldview are found in the first two sections, about 2/5 of the book, titled "Ideas and Opinions" and "On Politics, Government, and Pacifism". The first section shows him to be a rather typical European intellectual, viewing America from a European standpoint. For example, he observes that an American is more goal-directed but a little less rigidly individualistic than a typical European. That is something with which some Americans might take issue! In his day he might have been the most visible proponent of total intellectual freedom among scientists, only modifying this view somewhat under threat from the possibility that the Nazis might develop atomic power and atomic weapons.

But I found most fascinating his extreme pacifism. In the second section he argues, strongly and repeatedly, for total disarmament, for all nations to eschew the use of force, most particularly armed warfare, and this to be enforced by a global authority which alone would be tasked to enforce the security of all. Here we find the highly brilliant Einstein as the poster child for Ivory Tower idealism. My answer to pacifism is, "As long as there exists the possibility for evil persons to attain coercive power, at any level, all others must be sufficiently armed and have the will to effectively resist, at any level." This demolishes pacifism in all its forms. You can quote me on that, and on this: Human nature must change dramatically before pacifism is practicable.

The third section, "On the Jewish People," contains ten items from My Worldview and four that were written or delivered between 1938 and 1950. Only the last item, "The Jews of Israel", was written (and delivered by radio broadcast) after the formation of Israel in the former territory of Palestine. Better than anyone else I have read from, he makes a clear case that the Jews cannot assimilate into any nation, because they are a nation already, though they were a nation without territory from 70 AD until 1948 AD; and that this fact is the singular source of Antisemitism.

The fourth and shortest section, "On Germany", primarily consists of letters between Einstein and the scientific academies from which he resigned after 1933, but concludes with a paean, "To the Heroes of the Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto." These sentences, written in 1944, make his standing clear:

"The Germans as an entire people are responsible for these mass murders and must be punished as a people if there is justice in the world and if the consciousness of collective responsibility in the nations is not to perish from the earth entirely. Behind the Nazi party stands the German people, who elected Hitler after he had in his book and in his speeches made his shameful intentions clear beyond the possibility of misunderstanding."

The fifth and longest section, about 45% of the whole, is "Contributions to Science." Here he explained his work to a variety of audiences, primarily his Special and General Theories of Relativity, but also his later work toward a Unified Field Theory. Here his fundamental approach is most clearly displayed, encapsulated in the proverb (not found in this book, because it is a paraphrase), "Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler."

Here we find Einstein as a master explainer. He shows that Newton felt compelled to introduce, almost against his will, the concepts of absolute space and absolute time, to make his mechanics and his gravitational theory work. Later physicists—Einstein mentions Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz and Mach, among others—labored to resolve inconsistencies in subtle experiments that test the limits of classical mechanics, as the Newtonian system has come to be called. Lorentz formulated a transformation based on the constancy of the speed of light, implied in the equations of Maxwell and observed by Michelson and Morley. Upon all this work did Einstein erect first Special Relativity, and a decade later, General Relativity.

I note that he gives rather short shrift to Quantum Theory. Indeed, it is well known that his view was quite at odds with that of Niels Bohr and what is now called the Copenhagen Interpretation. Now, since Einstein's death, three of the four known fundamental forces—Electromagnetism, Strong, and Weak—have been unified into one quantum-based theory, but Gravitation remains stubbornly on its own. Theories abound aimed at reconciling Quantum Mechanics with General Relativity, so far to no avail. The situation is analogous, but more confused, than the seemingly irreconcilable conflict between Newton and Lorentz, but so far no super-Einstein has arisen to resolve it.

It takes a lot of study and deep thinking to become comfortable with the fact that light is both a wave and a particle stream. I became used to working with photon streams long ago. (Here is my favorite illustration: In whichever way light arrives at your eye, it is refracted in the cornea and lens as a wave, but stimulates the cells in the retina as a particle stream.) Photons mediate the electromagnetic field and electromagnetic forces. So is there a Graviton that mediates gravity? Will physics students one day labor to become comfortable with both gravitational waves that obey General Relativity, and gravity as streams of gravitons according to a highly amped-up Quantum Theory?

To those working on this conundrum, I ask these things, for they truly puzzle me:

If gravity is mediated by gravitons, what emits them and where are they absorbed? Specifically, if black holes are real, from what are the gravitons that "reach out" to surrounding bodies emitted? Do gravitons indeed travel at the same speed as light, which implies that they have no "rest mass"? Or are they massive, and if so, how much "slower" than light do they travel (we know that neutrinos with their tiny masses seldom travel slower than about 0.999c)? And if gravitons are massive and thus sub-c, is there a possible violation of conservation of energy or of momentum in orbital motions, particularly on gravitational (or larger) scales? Could this account for the "cosmological constant" that is currently attributed to "dark energy"?

Back to Einstein. Reading his writings about science, one feels one can almost follow in his footsteps. Yet his subtlety and extreme power as a scientific thinker are shown when, upon looking away from the page, we find that we must take many, many tiny steps just to cross from one of his footprints to the next.

Guys - It may not be your prostate

kw: opinion, medicine, prostate health, kidneys

Gross Alert: Frank medical terminology ahead.

I frequently get up at night to urinate. Not always, but sometimes for a week or more at at a time. Other times, weeks go by without it. Interestingly, my wife pays a nighttime visit to the bathroom almost as frequently as I do. We are both rapidly approaching 70 years old. Thus, I have been pondering the "overnight express" phenomenon in older people in general, not just men. I am about to explain that not all nighttime urination is because of your aging prostate. But we're going down a rather windy garden path here…

We are bombarded with advertisements about "prostate health", typically promoting one nostrum or another that is supposed to make things better (and, they say with a wink and a nod, it "could" make your love life better). It is well known that the male prostate gland gradually grows throughout life. However, some grow more quickly than others, and if the statistics are correct, about half of men who are over 80 years old also have prostate cancer.

The ads seldom say anything about cancer. They address the more "normal" growth that has a cute medical term, BPH or Benign Prostate Hypertrophy. Those three words literally mean "not dangerous", "prostate gland", and "getting bigger". What ads don't mention is that some men's prostate glands have a harder "shell", and some have a softer shell. For the "hard shell" gang, growth of the tissues inside increases pressure on the urethra (the tube from the urinary bladder to and through the penis). So even when you pee at 3AM you have to push to feel emptied. For the "soft shell" guys (I am one), the gland just grows larger. Mine started out larger than average, and is now the size of a Jonathan apple, nearly twice the diameter of a normal prostate. If I had a hard-shelled gland, I'd have needed the "roto-rooter" operation by now.

A few years ago, I had a new doctor perform my yearly physical exam. She is blessed with long fingers, so a digital rectal exam is pretty easy. (I got rid of a short-fingered doctor who had to push so hard to reach the prostate that it hurt. And I got the sneaking suspicion that he kinda liked that, also.) The new doctor was concerned about my prostate, particularly because it felt a little off-center to her. I asked whether it is possible to do ultrasound to visualize the entire gland. She sent me to a Urologist with instructions to ask him that question.

The Urologist had me get a bladder ultrasound, one for which you drink a quart of water, wait an hour (it gets agonizing), and have an ultrasound test of the bladder. Then you get to pee, and the tech does another ultrasound to measure any residual urine in the bladder. I noticed that the ultrasound screen showed red and blue colors at times. I asked about it. The machine uses a Doppler technique to see motion in the urine, which shows the kidney pumping. It was doing so about once a minute. Did you know the kidney is a muscular organ? I had never thought of it. The active kidney during the test is a critical piece of information here.

The upshot: The technician measured 50cc of "residual urine", that I supposedly had not "voided". Back at the Urologist's office, he decided to repeat the test himself. I wondered inwardly why he didn't just do it the first time and spare Medicare some expense. Anyway, he got the same result, a 50cc "residual". He put on a rubber glove and felt my prostate, and said that, though it was large, it was soft and didn't feel like it should be causing trouble. He then wanted to do two things, a cystoscopy to look inside the tubes and the bladder, and a "Urodyne" test, which I'll explain in gross detail in a moment.

Firstly, the cystoscopy felt weird, like peeing in reverse as the tube went in. The doctor declared my bladder shows no signs of overpressure, and that the prostate was not tightening down on the urethra. He still wanted to go ahead with a Urodyne test.

Secondly, I did a lot of searching at sites like Medline, and found that there is no cause for concern until the amount of "residual" urine in such a test exceeds 100cc. I almost canceled the test, but went ahead. It was instructive, if uncomfortable on several levels!

The Urodyne test involves a different kind of catheter, that can be attached to a pump. It starts with having a thorough pee, then the catheter is put in and any "residual" is emptied through it. There was no residual in my case (another clue!). Then the pump was attached, and I was told to announce when I first felt "something in there", then when it felt like I "ought to go", then when it felt really urgent, "as much as I could stand". The nurse took all this down. Then she disconnected the catheter from the pump, told me I could pee freely into a measuring flask next to me, and left the room. She had performed the test unsupervised, which led me to doubt the doctor's judgement.

Once I was decently clothed again, the doctor and I talked. He said I had voided completely after the test, so there seemed to be no problem with my prostate. And he asked, "What was your original complaint?" I said, "I didn't have one. My PP sent me to you because she felt my prostate was off center or malformed." He got a look on his face like, "Oh, Sh**, he's gonna sue me!", but I said, "I'm glad everything seems to be in working order," and he looked relieved. He had me make an appointment with the clerk to return in a year, which I did, but the next day I called from home to cancel it. Less drama than just refusing to make it in the first case.

So what is the upshot? There is one more piece of medical evidence: the way our kidneys work and how that changes with age. From the time we gain nighttime "bladder control" at some age between two and ten, our kidneys greatly reduce their output when we are asleep. They resume normal operation when the light increases, and if we are not already awake, we soon wake up to rush to the bathroom. Here is all the evidence in one list:

• At the ultrasound tests, both of them, the time from getting to pee and the tech beginning the ultrasound measurements of urine in the bladder was 10-15 minutes. At the rate a kidney produces urine when you've had a lot to drink in the past hour or two, that is plenty of time to generate 50-100cc of urine. I think that is why 100cc is the threshold of concern for Medline.
• The Urodyne test showed I am able to void completely.
• The cystoscopy showed I have not been over-pushing to urinate against prostate back-pressure.
• It also showed that there was no tightness where the urethra passes through the gland.
• Normal, young kidneys slow down at night, then speed up about sunrise. This is probably mediated by Melatonin.

My conclusion? In older people, most if not all, the kidneys don't slow down at night. At least, they don't slow down as much as they did decades earlier.

Fellas, if you are over 50, whether your prostate is "tight" or not, you probably will be getting up to pee at some early-morning hour like 3AM. The crux of the matter is whether you have to push hard to feel like you're getting emptied out. The need to push is the main evidence of a possible prostate problem. If you can just relax and the bladder empties out and you feel quite OK, you're probably OK. And gals, if you are getting along in years and getting up at night to pee, of course you don't have a prostate to blame. It's just aging kidneys that don't take a rest like they used to.

If you talk to a doctor about this, there's half a chance he or she will look at you like you are from Mars. If that happens I suggest you print out this blog post, pass it along and say, "See if you can prove this guy is wrong, then." I'll be interested to learn of any professional feedback!

To Coventry

kw: firearms, opinion, exile, sensibility

I intended to write this about eight hours ago. No matter. The President has announced his proposals for curbing gun violence, I don't yet know what they are, and I don't really care anyway. I wrote a few days ago of my beliefs regarding the ownership of guns. Larger issues are at stake here.

Let us first recall that Timothy McVeigh did not need a gun to destroy the Murrah Building in OKC, killing 168 people, including 19 small children, and injuring 800 or more, including 450 children. Thus, while we need to address problems with pathological gun ownership and use, we need even more to address human psychology in very practical ways. As I see it, there are three kinds of persons whose presence society cannot safely abide.

Firstly, consider why we do not permit 6-year-olds to carry pistols. There would be carnage aplenty, in schools and homes both. Six-year-olds have too little impulse control. A 20- or 30-year-old with the impulse control of a normal 6-year-old must be prevented from even handling a weapon. Period…at least in civil society.

But Tim McVeigh had, and Adam Lanza has, good impulse control. Neither one flew off the handle, nor fell prey to some instant rage. What they did required intelligence and planning. In another setting, either one would have been a good project manager. They both were under the influence of ideas we call deranged. For their sake, as for that of private assassins in general, the problem is the ideas. This is a second kind of person: patient and thoughtful, yet influenced by an intolerable idea—as intolerable to them as it is to us, but in different ways. They exemplify the proverb: Beware the wrath of a patient man.

The third kind is the most starkly evil, yet the hardest to deal with: People who unshakingly believe they have the right to decide for others. In particular, they believe they must decide for others, at the expense of the others' right to decide. This is my definition of a psychopath. It also happens to aptly define nearly all members of Congress (both houses and all parties) after a term or two in office, if not from the very start. This is the best reason there is for having term limits! It also describes many preachers, pastors, and church officials from Popes down to the lowliest priest. To my observation, the only Pope not afflicted with this deadly curse was John Paul II. It describes bullying classroom teachers. It describes a great many people in authority, those who exemplify "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely". Of American Presidents, only George Washington was clear on this principle and took steps to escape its influence. In the pre-Medieval church, no man could be confirmed as an Elder who was known to desire it. Church leaders in some places would go so far as to ask a talented brother if he wished to be an Elder. Only if he refused, three times on three successive occasions, would they practically force him into eldership (of course there were ways to game the system, but it was better then letting every ambitious bully run the churches). There is a caveat here. Restricting guns from these evil ones will have no effect. They do not need guns to destroy lives. Society in general would be better off without their presence. I call these the Controllers.

Even if we agree to deal with all three kinds of persons, what are we to do? None of them fits the moniker "mentally ill". No provision that the President or Congress is likely to propose touches any of them. Yet they are the clearest and most present dangers. Yet they are very hard to identify.

Lack of impulse control is the easiest to detect. Just watch how a person deals with frustration. Give someone just the tiniest bit of deadline pressure, and see what they do. Road rage is a classic symptom. My father tells of a fighter pilot he knew. He says the man was constantly on hair trigger. He could snatch flies from the air. No enemy fighter even got close to shooting him down. But if you surprised him, he'd snatch your hand so quickly you didn't see him move. Then, with an effort, he would usually quiet himself to ask what was going on. Usually. Sometimes he'd knock you out instead. Dad wonders what became of him after the war. He was totally unfit for civil society. But he was very, very useful in wartime! Such people need careful management and to be directed into vocations that need their particular talents.

The planners are tougher to detect, maybe impossible, at present. In the future, who knows? Our poorest science is psychology. Will it become better? Genuinely effective "profiling" may one day help. Even harder: determining a planner's obsession and then effectively replacing it with a more constructive one (Oh, they're still gonna be obsessed. That's what makes a good project manager).

Toughest of all: What do we do with Controllers? Do they have a use we can take advantage of? Can their energies be directed in less destructive directions? I firmly believe they must be kept from the reins of power. Yet, doesn't that make me a kind of Controller also? And Controllers require power to be happy. That is why so many work their way into positions of authority, over businesses, churches, schools, and governments. Do we have a right to deny their right to the pursuit of happiness?

I have an analogy. In the film Key Largo, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauran Bacall, and Edward G. Robinson, the hero says to the villain Rocko, "I know what you want." Rocko replies, "Oh, yeah? What??" "More. You want more." Rocko exclaims, "Yeah! I want MORE." He is already rich, but he wants more. Our genuine needs may be rather modest, but our wants are infinite. Why is America a consumer culture? Because of the universal desire for more, More, MORE! Finite Nature conspires to deny us complete fulfillment of our infinite desires.

Controllers are those who want something, but in getting it they injure the rights of others. This want must be denied, but how? I suggest setting up a Coventry. To what does Coventry refer? In the English civil war, royalist prisoners of war were sent to the town of Coventry, which was rather remote, making the prisoners easy to hold with a small force. During a rather short period, the prisoners pretty much governed themselves. Over time, this idea led to the notion of exile as "being sent to Coventry". A short time later certain prisoners were "transported" to the American colonies (an ancestor of mine among them), and two centuries later Australia was used for a similar purpose. But the byword is not "sent to Australia" but "sent to Coventry".

We need a Coventry for Controllers. Let them strive to control one another. Use a few of them to control the borders! The hardest task will be keeping those on the outside who must interact with the "Coventry Border Authority" from becoming covert Controllers themselves. It will have to be a rotating job. If we ever develop really smart robots, and can ensure that the robots are incorruptible, they might be the best at this.

There is a danger, of course. It was explored in a few episodes of Star Trek, culminating in the film The Wrath of Khan. You can't run a Coventry on autopilot. It will be an endless burr under society's saddle. But I believe it must be done. Trouble, is, who will do it? Only the Controllers have the will and the ruthlessness. Society will be plagued by the depredations of Controllers for generations to come. We must ponder the implications of this, and consider how we can prepare our offspring, and their offspring, how to deal with it.

A conservative for fewer firearms

kw: politics, firearms, opinion, sensibility

I have had about enough of NRA posturing. They still talk about the right to "hunt", while defending the collecting of huge numbers of weapons whose only possible use is mass murder, by some of the most unstable elements of society. The actual position of many in NRA was most clearly stated by Rush Limbaugh a number of years ago (and probably on several occasions): "The Second Amendment is there in case the government won't keep the First Amendment."

Such a statement advocates armed insurgency against government. How many ways can you spell "Treason"? If it really comes to that, does anyone really expect to come out ahead in a conflict with a government that has at its disposal a military organization of five branches (plus 50 national guard units), each of which can afford to spend millions or even billions in a matter of days?

Hey you, there, you reading this: Did you learn to read after 1993? If so, maybe you never heard of Ruby Ridge, Idaho or Waco, Texas. Look 'em up, or look up Randy Weaver and David Koresh. But maybe you are the defiant type. Maybe you are one of those fellows who say, "They'll only get my gun by prying it out of my cold, dead fingers." Really? There are some entirely humorless fellows out there who are totally up to that challenge. If they think that's what is needed, they'll accomplish it without breaking a sweat.

Not only that. In a martial arts class I was taking half a century ago, a student asked, "What if we are attacked by someone with a dangerous weapon?" The instructor said, "There are no dangerous weapons, just dangerous men. Learn well, and you can neutralize anything." Account for the times; at present I know some dangerous women also. Some people I know wouldn't have to pry the gun out of your "cold, dead fingers", because they'd remove the fingers and the hand before you could squeeze the trigger. And you'd probably not even set eyes on them.

So let's be sensible. There is no legitimate reason for private citizens to own mass murder weapons, period. A weapon for self-defense is one thing. The kind of weapons used by the killer in the Connecticut school, or the one Colorado movie theater, must be eliminated. I equate such weapons with hand grenades. There is a reason you can't get a live hand grenade on eBay or Craigslist. There a similar reason you need a special permit to obtain C-4 or dynamite. We can't have a "hobbyist" accidentally blowing up a city block.

Oh, did you say you like to collect guns? They are not stamps! In my view, weapon collecting ought only to be allowed if the weapons are permanently disabled.

And yes, I am a conservative. I vote about 85% Republican (because about 15% of conservatives are Democrats. I observe deeds, not ideologies). I am the kind of old-fashioned conservative who remembers that environmentalism began as a Republican ideal: conserving a portion of the wilderness; the kind who knows that Liberal used to mean "in favor of more liberty" and used to be a part of the conservative agenda; the kind who thinks the Bible meant it when it said, "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword", just update "sword" a couple millennia; and the kind who thinks the "insanity defense" should not exist, because of course the killer was probably insane, but we want that kind of insanity eliminated from the gene pool anyway. Now, there's a mixed bag of political ideas, but they used to define "conservative".

I am in favor of a law that allows law enforcement officers who see anything that looks like a mass murder weapon, to confiscate it immediately, with deadly force if necessary. Oh, yeah, outlaw toys that look like that, also. We don't want a cop to take a kid's plastic toy, now, do we?

Women in combat

kw: opinion, observations, military service

A purportedly legal case is wending its way through the courts, and there is a strangely muted debate going on, regarding women in combat. I have instinctively rejected the thought of women serving in active combat, but have wondered how to explain it. Science Fiction writer Robert Heinlein supplied the right words, some forty years ago. As found in this PDF file, Heinlein, a naval officer, delivered the James Forrestal Memorial Lecture to the Brigade of Midshipmen in April 1973. The first half of his remarks concern how to write fiction and get paid for it. Then he went on to ask the audience, "Why are you here?"

In 1973, patriotism was unpopular. It is even less popular today. Heinlein described how to find a troop of baboons on the African veldt: don't look on the ground, but look for a lone baboon up a tree. That is the sentinel of a troop, invariably a young male. Why is he there? He is a lookout for predators, primarily leopards. His role is patriotic. Should he spot a leopard he can warn the others in time for them to take to the trees, where they have a chance of avoiding or fighting off a leopard. Every couple of hours a different young male is sent up the tree to relieve the first, who can then forage for food.

Heinlein discussed the morality of fighting. If you are attacked, you fight for your life. If you aren't willing to defend yourself, you are a detriment to the species. You will soon die and your "morality" in other regards will not matter at all. The attacker is immoral; the defender is moral. Then, at the next level, will you defend your family members? To do so is moral. To fail to do so leads to extinction of your family. To cut this discursion short: will you fight for your city, state or nation? To do so is moral. Heinlein then recalls the Navy's basic motto of patriotism: "Save women and children first."

Why is this more moral than other possible choices? Men are expendable. Women and children are not, if there is to be a future for the group, whether it is a family or a nation or a species, including Homo sapiens. In the ultimate "Adam" fantasy, one man can impregnate a nearly unlimited number of women. But one woman cannot bear any great number of children. Simply compare two scenarios:

• A terrible disaster has left one man alive, and 100 women.
• A terrible disaster has left one woman alive, and 100 men.

With which scenario can the population be most rapidly rebuilt to a viable level? We all know that the second scenario will result in fighting among the men until one, or just a few (and all but one will be very subservient!) will be left living. With only one woman, the next generation will number no more than twenty, and probably fewer than that.

This is not to say that women are poor fighters. I know a number of women who are stronger, faster and smarter than I am, and I am no weak man. But they can bear children, and I cannot. However, let me quote Heinlein's key sentence: "Every human culture is based on 'Women and children first'—and any attempt to do it any other way leads quickly to extinction." For this reason, and this reason alone, allowing women in combat is a morally repugnant idea and ought to be rejected in the most definite manner.

When did the labels switch?

kw: sociology, politics, economics, opinion

Around 30 years ago someone who had a lot of influence over me at the time, said he tended to have a liberal attitude towards domestic policy and a conservative attitude towards foreign policy. That describes my own political leaning, for the most part, but I've come to realize things are more complicated. There is actually no single "political spectrum". The traditional "radical-liberal-moderate-conservative-reactionary" labels are not all on the same line.

In the mid-1800s the social and political disputes centered on slavery. To be an abolitionist was considered a somewhat radical viewpoint, yet abolitionists were nearly all Republicans, at least from 1854 when the Republican Party was initiated by anti-slavery activists. Fifty years further along, Theodore Roosevelt, the leading Republican, led the way to establish a national presence in Environmentalism by creating the first national parks, and also practically re-created economic competition in an era of moneybags monopolies by "trust busting" and getting laws passed that still forestall the creation of economic monopolies. The Republicans had become the leading socially liberal party. Strangely, it was also a conservative party: for example, environmentalism, rightly construed, is a conservative value. I am staunchly environmentalist, though I am "conservative" in many areas.

After another fifty years, much had changed. The Republicans were practically left out of the debates over civil rights that led to landmark social legislation from 1964 to 1968. The fight was between "conservative" and "liberal" Democrats, and now "liberal" meant pro-liberation, pro-voting-rights, and "conservative", at least among the Dems, meant pro-Jim Crow. The only nod to Republican influence was the perceived need to modify the language of the original 1964 bill so that a greater number of liberal and moderate Republicans would be willing to vote with the liberal Democrats.

The labels are out of date. "Liberals" and "Conservatives" don't know what the terms mean. Both the Democrat and Republican Parties have a mix of positions that can be confusing. To be a "loyal" member of either faction, one has to pass a number of "litmus tests" and it is getting harder to do so with any consistency.

• Bigger versus smaller government? Liberals are for bigger, conservatives for smaller, except conservatives are for a larger army, while liberals are the reverse. Here I am a moderate: enough government to do the job, but no more. We do need continuing debate over what "the guv" ought to be doing, however.
• Capitalism versus Socialism? Conservatives are for unrestrained capitalism, and the more reactionary ones wish to reverse "trust busting" laws. Liberals are for increased regulation and restraint on "business", particularly "big business". Another element needs to be added here: Transparency. I am for less regulation but more "light", and thus very strong laws protecting whistle-blowers, perhaps even rewarding them, while I strongly support the efforts of investigative reporters to expose bad business practices. Remember Ralph Nader and Unsafe at Any Speed? Nader went nuts later, but in a way I still appreciate.
• The Second Amendment? Conservatives tend to be led by the nose by the NRA. Liberals would wholly disarm us. I give great weight to the "well-regulated militia" phrase, and would require membership in the National Guard of all wishing to own non-sporting firearms. You don't need an Uzi to shoot deer. The NRA talk of "hunting" is a red herring. Make a gun license like a driving license: it expires and requires regular reinstatement, and gun-safety courses.
• Abortion on demand? AKA a woman's right to choose? Libs pro, Consies anti. I favor abortion where it makes sense. I am opposed to abortion as a form of "birth control". I prefer conception control, so coming right up:
• State-provided (or mandated) Contraception? Libs pro, of course. Some conservatives actually favor some form of this, but not the more religious ones, particularly Catholics. I favor a strong, well-funded research program to develop a means of contraception that is applied at puberty, works long-term (at least a few years but 10-20 is better), and requires definite action to reverse before the term expires. If women want a right to choose, it ought to be in favor of choosing to have a baby, rather than choosing to abort one. In a world of 7 billions, the default state of men and women ought to be "infertile."
• Immigration, particularly amnesty (or "don't ask") for illegals? I'll abbreviate: L+, C-. I say pass a minimum wage law that mandates a truly "living wage", with the only exceptions being after-hours or summer jobs for dependent teens, and only dependent teens (who are in school) are allowed to hold such jobs. Then open the borders. If a Mexican or Canadian or Algerian or Kenyan or German or Chinese or Norwegian qualifies best for the job, let 'em have it. No "working visa" required. Ya wanna better job? Earn it. That is genuine conservatism!
• Welfare, food stamps, WIC, etc.? L+, C sorta -. A tough one. Let's hark back to FDR and the CCC, and at least require anyone "on the dole" to do something productive, like sweep the streets or scrub off graffiti in their own neighborhood. The able-bodied non-parents can be sent farther afield, to undertake infrastructure repair, which is long overdue.
• Foreign policy? L appeasement, C "big stick". Both are outdated. We presently occupy more than half the nations. Let's commit to a drawdown, to reduce all our foreign bases to zero American occupancy within ten years. That leaves us with the problem of a million or so soldiers to re-integrate into US society. Replace with contractual agreements with allies so we can use their facilities if needed to handle the logistics of any war we need to get involved in. I pray the need shrinks over time.
• Legalizing illegal drugs? L+, C-. It is clear that the "war on drugs" is a colossal failure. The majority of those in our prisons are its victims, and have now been trained to live criminal lives. It can't be undone overnight, but steps must be taken to repeal the whole thing. This is the Prohibition of the 2010's and is just as misdirected as the prior one of 70-80 years ago. If you, Mr or Ms Pothead, want to screw up your brain until you are unable to work and die in the gutter, go right ahead. That's a kind of social Darwinism I can get behind. Maybe a soft-hearted politician or two will get a law passed to feed you in your gutter.
• Separation of church and state? This is a misunderstanding of the First Amendment's "establishment" clause. Both L and D are confused about this. Many modern L's are anti-faith. Many modern D's push to inject religion into national policy. Both are wrong. Government ought to take no notice of faith or religious practice, except where it violates common morality, such as human sacrifice or ritualized theft or public fornication, for example. That could come to mean removing the tax exemption from church corporations. I think "non-profit" tax exemption is so misused it ought to be abolished anyway. Just think, Scientology would have never been founded by Hubbard if the exemption wasn't there.

I've gone on long enough for one post. I guess I can't be claimed as either a C or an L. I am for what is sensible, but "Sensibilist" is such a clumsy word!

A writer's writer

kw: observations, opinion, writing, writers

I wish to comment further on Globish by Robert McCrum, which I reviewed yesterday. Reading the book was an experience not far removed from reading a good novel. I was not just learning, but was transported elsewhere.

Though the book is filled with evidence of great erudition, it is not a dry, scholarly tome. I have had to read plenty of learned works, the kind that induce slumber. Most share some common defects, all of which McCrum has adroitly avoided. He used endnotes, but done in a style that does not leave the text riddled with superscripted 1,2,3; the notes themselves are succinct and seldom exceed two lines; the references to published work are smoothly done, avoiding author (date) references in favor of more personal and personable narrative; he avoided footnotes, because if something is worth saying it is worth saying as you go and be done with it, and this goes for long endnotes also.

I was reminded of the best of nineteenth century writing (a century which also produced some of the least readable books every printed). Reading ought to be a joy, and give evidence that the author enjoyed the writing as much as you enjoy the reading. A well-written book makes me feel as if I were snuggled with the author in an overstuffed chair as we read together. I do hope Mr. McCrum would not find such a sentiment creepy.

A nut among the fruitcakes

kw: opinion, eating, weight loss

In a radio ad I heard Steve Bostic, of "Right Size Smoothies", claim "You can gain weight eating 1,000 calories a day if you eat the wrong foods" (the quote may not be exact, but it is close).

Calories are calories. There are several calculators online that will tell you how many calories are needed to maintain your body weight, depending on age, sex and activity level. This is a very well known area of nutrition science. The one I used is at Shapefit.

I figured initially that a tiny, sedentary person might need less than 1,000 calories a day. I put in figures for a variety of undersized adults. Here is one result, at a ridiculous extreme: Male, age 65, sedentary, 5 feet tall, weight 80 pounds. Calories needed: 1,106 per day. A female the same size would need a little more.

For myself (6 feet, age 63, 200 pounds) the daily caloric need is 2,337.

Clearly, the claim made in the ad is bogus.

Some say, If only

kw: opinion, popular culture

Some say, "If only..." but I say it is too silly for words. As I write this The Bachelorette 6 is showing on the local ABC affiliate, and my wife has been watching on and off. I looked in about an hour ago, for five minutes, which just about doubled the total amount of time I've watched either The Bachelor or The Bachelorette.

With a bit of Googling, I determined that one couple of seventeen has actually married and stayed together long enough to produce a couple of children. They say they are happy. I wish them well. For most of the rest, the TV exposure helped them land hot jobs, so they got some benefit from the experience, not just what they expected going in.

The fact is, folks, building a relationship is hard work. Building one that will last a lifetime of sharing child-rearing, juggling jobs and trying to snatch some leisure time now and again, and aging together, takes the most work of all, and guess what? The work doesn't half begin until after the wedding. For those who don't bother with a wedding, face it, you're doomed. You've already failed the first important test of lifetime compatibility: trusting another person enough to commit the rest of your life to him or her.

Building that kind of trust takes time. I like long courtships. Six months or a year just starts to scratch the surface. And the other secret is this: the real courtship begins after the wedding also. You will spend the rest of your life courting each other, if you're smart!

The overheated, camera-laden atmosphere of the TV shows makes any semblance of real courtship impossible. The ordinary course of dating is bad enough, but ABC has managed to produce something even worse. All the stage-managing and coaching that go into making the show work as a show simply ensure that, if it results in a newly-engaged couple, the two of them are in for some shocks as they find out just how their new love interest actually operates without all the interference. Sixteen out of seventeen found the differences were too great.

Y'know, thinking about it, spending time with a dozen or more beauties in exotic locales would be a lot of fun. Choosing whom to send home wouldn't even be too hard at first. Even with everyone on their best behavior, someone will slip up, and Boom! out they go. Being a control freak, though, I'd be sure to send away anyone who had any gumption, any girl with the temerity to challenge a whim of mine. I am soon to celebrate 35 years of marriage to a woman who stands up to me a lot. And I need it. I even (this takes time) thank her for her help; she has helped me avoid a number of bad decisions. I'm sure glad I found her. She'd never have survived in a Bachelor setting.

Good enough for me

kw: opinion, technology

Just about a year ago, in an article for Wired, Robert Capps discussed "the good enuf rvlutn", and why cheap was beating out superior on many fronts. This is nothing new; it has always been the case. Not only does the Flip outsell Sony camcorders that will record movies in HD, and the Kindle outsell some E-book readers with glitzier features:

• Chevy outsells Cadillac, Ford outsells Mercury and Lincoln, and Camry outsells Lexus, in spite of the fact that each pair is produced by the same manufacturer.
• Lower- and mid-level point-and-shoot digital cameras will always outsell more advanced models, and in fact many people with 5+Mpx cameras in their cell phones have "better" cameras sitting at home collecting dust.
• Beer outsells wine.

In each case, the product that provides something a customer wants, and which passes a foggily defined "good as it needs to be" threshold, will succeed wildly, compared to "the best there is." It explains why the VW Bug (the old one) was the best-selling car to young Baby Boomers in the 1960s and early '70s: it got you from point A to point B and left you money in your wallet for something besides transportation.

It is said that MP3 files sound terrible compared to a CD. I guess I don't have a very good ear (in spite of the fact that I have been a professional musician): I can't tell the difference once the quality level reaches 128 whatever-it-is (Kbps?). So I have a ton of old (1930s and earlier) songs on MP3 to satisfy my Western Swing appetite, and a smaller amount of newer stuff in the Country/Family genre.

All this does not totally take account of the appeal of mid-level stuff, however. A significant factor is focus. I once belonged to a very active lapidary club. Most of the members were retirees, and their passion was spending frequent weekends in the Mojave Desert, collecting large amounts of "agates" (lotsa rocks get called that which are only agates in the loosest sense), and cutting-n-grinding cabochons or faceted stones to show off to each other, or at regional shows. Many of these folks had two expensive things: A motor home or camper truck, and a gem cutting workstation. At a time when I could barely afford a $2 lunch more than every other week, I spent $100 on a Diamond Demon (this is forty years ago). Many of them had spent $500 and more. But none of us had a really good camera, coffee maker, or pair of hiking boots. Oh, yeah; we did all have quite good rock hammers and chisels!

Most people don't really care to have the best possible example of everything. They want things that meet their needs and desires, affordably, and only splurge on a very few things. There will always be a market for products that support the focus of people with a dedicated passion, but the market for everyone else, for "good enough" products, will always be larger by far.

Go jump off a building for fun and profit

kw: opinion, entertainment

There are very few TV shows that I watch with any regularity. One I took a liking for in its first season was Wipeout on ABC. Its new season has just begun, and it is being followed by another "win a million" sort of show, titled Downfall.

I've only seen the trailers, which indicate that you start with a lot of cool stuff on a conveyor belt at the edge of a skyscraper, and you have to answer trivia questions. Wrong answer? Something is shot off the roof to crash below. Too many wrong answers? You are also shot off (wearing a harness so you can scream all you want, but don't hit bottom).

I decline to watch Downfall. The premise is terminally silly. Now, Wipeout I like!

Coal burning cars

kw: opinion, technology, environmentalism

In the July 2010 issue of Scientific American, Michael Moyer has written an article that speaks directly to a concern I have long had about electric cars: Where does the electricity come from? The article, on pages 55-56, is titled "The Dirty Truth about Plug-in Hybrids".

To cut to the chase, the amount of benefit, or lack thereof, simply depends on where you live. A plug-in hybrid vehicle is expected to use about half the gasoline used by a first-generation hybrid such as the Toyota Prius or a Honda Civic Hybrid. An all-electric car, of course, burns no gasoline at all. Thus, in most parts of the U.S., an all-electric uses no gasoline, but not all. In New York state, in particular, where 2/3 of the electricity is generated by burning petroleum products similar to gasoline, you may as well be driving a gasoline-burning car.

In most of the rest of the highly-populated, industrial Northeast and in the deep South and upper Midwest, while little or no electricity is generated using petroleum, from half to 75% is generated using coal, making an electric vehicle that plugs in a worse producer of carbon dioxide than a pure hybrid vehicle.

The areas where an electric, whether all-electric or plug-in hybrid, will have a benefit in both reducing carbon dioxide and greatly reducing petroleum consumption are those areas that use no petroleum or coal to generate electricity: the Pacific Northwest, California, Texas, and Florida. In the lower Midwest and desert Southwest and New England, though a little coal is used, little enough is burned that an electric car is also a benefit there.

Now consider population. The coal-burning areas are mostly high-population areas, and the natural gas-burning (and nuclear-powered) areas are mostly areas of lower population density. The only highly-populated area in which an electric car is a distinct benefit is California.

If you are considering getting a greener car, find out where your electricity comes from. If you are in a coal-burning area, a pure hybrid is probably the best. Otherwise, a "more electric" vehicle just may be the right thing to get.

I try to get clean

kw: product testing, opinion

A few days ago I reviewed Green Goes With Everything (here). The book is mainly an extended advertisement for the new line of Shaklee products. I've used a very few Shaklee products for nearly forty years, including Basic H, the blue-colored household cleanser concentrate. I mainly use it in the shower. It is the only thing with which I've cleaned my body since 1970. Every evening, I use about one CC on my hair and face (I keep it out of my eyes), and another CC on my body. Thus, a gallon jug is good for almost 2,000 showers. I use it undiluted.

I decided to try new Get Clean Basic H2, which replaced Basic H not so long ago. It is claimed to be more concentrated than Basic H. I am finding out if that is true. Last evening, I put two ounces of water in a small squeeze bottle and added a quarter ounce of H2. That's an 8:1 dilution. After some experimentation, I found I needed several CC to get cleaned off.

Tonight I added another quarter ounce to the squeeze bottle, making it a 4:1 dilution. I used one CC on my hair. Not quite good enough. A second wash with one CC got my hair and face clean. A couple CC on my body did well enough.

I'll add another half ounce to the bottle tomorrow and see how it works at 2:1 dilution (or 33%). I suspect it'll require going that far, or all the way to a 1:1 dilution (50%) before I can get equally clean with one CC, as I do with one CC of H. Should that be true, I'll judge the product acceptable. At the moment, it is provisionally "barely acceptable".

Where wasted money goes

kw: opinion, finance

Nearly every day there is a headline somewhere, particularly on the Internet media, that proclaims in huge type how we're spending anywhere from four to twelve billion dollars monthly "in Iraq". People write about this as though there were deep, dark well in Iraq somewhere, down which dollars pour in an unending Niagara. Do you know how much money we are actually spending in Iraq? Nearly nothing!

We have about 150,000 troops there, whose salaries, benefits and other overhead total a quarter billion dollars monthly. Maybe a bit more, depending on ranking officers' salaries. Most of the rest is for consumable weaponry, fuel, medical and food supplies. We may actually purchase some of our supplies from the Iraqis, but it's tiny, tiny.

The vast majority of the money is spent…guess where?…In the U.S.A.! Let's assume four billion dollars change hands every month, related to the war. Nearly all of it goes to U.S. companies and U.S. workers. It circulates in the U.S. economy, not the Iraqi or any other nation's economy. Based on the ordinary leverage factors, that four billion bucks generates twelve to sixteen billion dollars of economic activity. In fact, no matter where the U.S. government spent that four billion dollars, it would generate exactly the same amount of economic activity, right here in the U.S.!

So where's the waste? You may disagree with what the money is being spent on, but please don't say it's "going" anywhere. It is all spent right here in the U.S. economy.

A more likely response

kw: opinion, politics

In my previous post, I outlines two scenarios that might follow the pregnancy of a candidate's child, if it occurred on the Democratic side. As I wrote, these scenarios were based on the public social positions of the present and former candidates. However, I don't really think the Biden or Obama family would actually behave that way (the Clintons just might). In my experience, when it is their own family on the line, folks are quite a bit more conservative than they are when giving speeches or formulating policy.

Thus I would not expect much difference between the possible actions of the Obamas or Bidens as compared to the Palins, and Senator Obama's statement regarding the situation supports my expectation.

Doing the right thing anyway

kw: opinion, politics

I seldom comment on the political scene, but this time it is personal. I know from the inside the family dynamics that occur when a member has strayed and will have to live with the consequences. This is the case with the new Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin and her pregnant daughter. It has been announced that the daughter will keep the baby and marry the baby's father, and that Senator McCain knew about the situation beforehand. I see this as a remarkably responsible response by Governor Palin and her family.

It is no surprise to me that the Democratic Party leadership is forging a scandal about this. Of course, it actually is a bit of a scandal, but a family one, not a political one. The real scoundrels here are those making hay out of this.

Let's just consider if a young pregnant woman whose surname happened to be Biden, Obama, or even Clinton, were "exposed" at this juncture. What would be the result? Based on the public pronouncements by the Democratic candidates and former candidates (and a former President), one of two possible scenarios would ensue:

1. A behind-the-scenes "How dare you endanger this campaign" conversation, followed by a hushed-up abortion.
2. Perhaps the same conversation, perhaps not, but then a very public "Our daughter will raise this baby herself," with the implied, self-congratulatory attitude that no man need be involved.

Both scenarios are fully in keeping with the social policies of the far Left, and both are deeply irresponsible. Say what you like about Conservative politics and social policies, Conservatives are strongly for taking responsibility for your own actions, including doing what you can to correct of ameliorate your mistakes.

• Admitting the facts is responsible.
• Declining to "correct the problem" via abortion is responsible.
• Advising a young couple to enter into a very young and risky marriage is more responsible, compared to the tendency to forbid the young people to see one another. The baby is likely to do better with two natural parents than in most adoptive scenarios.
• Pledging familial support and encouragement to the young couple is responsible.

However painful this may be for the two sets of parents involved, they are taking the right course. If anything, this incident strengthens my confidence that Gov. Palin is a very good choice for the "heartbeat away from the Presidency."

The beauty of fitness

kw: opinion, personal experience, exercise

Watching the Olympics broadcasts reminded me that nobody can really be ugly who takes care of himself or herself (I'm excluding accidents and deformities here, but even the most stomach-lurching deformity is, to me, along a different dimension than 'beauty-ugliness'). I've felt rather ugly for years, but recently things have changed. Why? I began to get more regular exercise, with results that surprised me.

The portly guy you see feeding ducks in my profile picture—which is more than ten years in the past—settled out by the mid-fifties to 230 lbs (105 kg) at a height of six feet (1.82 m). I was on cholesterol medicine, but not to lower it...I have too little HDL, the "good cholesterol". I am someone who really enjoys a good feed, but the cholesterol medicine, Tricor, made me famished all the time. I was afraid of ballooning even more.

Finally my doctor nagged me enough to make me get off my duff. I knew I could make by blood chemistry better, at the very least, by doing a little exercise. Almost on a dare, about five years ago I walked two miles daily for three months. My blood fats dropped in half and my blood pressure also went down. But it didn't take me long to resume a lifestyle quite a bit more sedentary than average.

Two years ago my wife began going almost daily to an aerobics class at the YMCA. A year ago I said to her, "Sign us both up for full membership. I need to have an incentive (that high monthly dues) to go exercise." I took their beginners' free personal training session to establish a baseline. But I soon established a routine that suits my history. For example, I used to cycle a lot, so I chose a cycle machine rather than an elliptical. I'm not coordinated enough (polio is part of the problem) to work one. They have two types, and I like the one that is more like a recumbent bicycle; I'm rather tired of the racing style of bike, too hard on the back and the knees.

I also began using various weight machines once or twice weekly. At age sixty, it takes a day or two longer to recover from strength training soreness, so the youth's 3-5 times/week regimen is out of the question. Mostly I use a back machine and an abs machine, but I also do upper body workouts at least weekly. I do unweighted squats for my legs, in addition to what the cycle machine does for them.

OK, so what is the outcome? I had blood test results a couple weeks ago at a checkup that amazed me:

• Triglycerides (fat in the blood) started at ~300. Tricor had lowered the number to ~150. Now it is 80.
• HDL started at 25 (50+ is best). Tricor raised that number to 35. Exercise without Tricor resulted (so far) in 38. My LDL stayed the same throughout at about 80 (90 or less is best.)
• My liver enzymes were better. Formerly one was "marginal", indicating minor liver damage and a "fatty liver".

I need to add that I also added a lot of Omega-3 to my diet, which the doctor thinks is partly responsible for some of these results. And what else improved? Well:

• My weight is steady at 210 lbs (94 kb).
• I don't puff after a flight of stairs.
• I used to struggle off the mattress each morning (pathetic!). Now I can sit right up.
• I can walk rapidly and still talk, so fitness walks with my wife are more enjoyable.

We're still working on walking more times weekly, but the YMCA exercises are doing us both a lot of good.

Such a report needs goals. Mine are modest:

• Keep it up.
• Bring walking up to 4-5x weekly.
• Eat slightly smaller dinners—without changing breakfast and lunch.
• Aim for a nice, round 200 lbs.
• Get more sleep (hard to get more than 5h/night at the moment).
  

I'll see how all this works out over the coming year. Back-to-school week is a good time to reflect and to plan for the year to come.

The Fusion Solution - and Opus 500

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, polemics, opinion, education

All our oil imports come from hostile Islamic nations, right? I thought so until I looked it up. I got the motivation to look it up from Glenn Beck, upon reading his new book An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems. If you can't stand the suspense, look at the bottom of this post for an eye-opening table. The conclusion is that about half our total petroleum imports come from Canada plus Mexico plus Venezuela plus a few other South American nations. That is, from the Western Hemisphere. Saudi Arabia is the second-biggest supplier, after Canada. Surprised?

Inconvenient puts energy matters in the middle of a 22-chapter volume that offers information, commentary, and realistic solutions to everything from boosting our memory of names to political correctness, which underlies many of our most thorny issues.

Beck calls his radio and television programs "the fusion of entertainment with enlightenment", and that is certainly a fair description of this book. I must certainly agree with Beck when he advocates the elimination of tipping. In Japan, for instance, offering a tip is considered an insult. It is just a way to get overly hopeful wait staff to accept wages below the "minimum" (another item Beck prefers we abolish)...and has become some kind of institutionalized bribery scam. Now we get "tip advice" from the newspaper deliverer (not a paperboy any more)!

I also agree that professorial tenure ought to be abolished. It just perpetuates mediocre instructing. And I agree that the human component of global warming is likely to do more good than harm. In fact, I find it hard to disagree with Glenn Beck. He is fast with a quip on his live programs, but his basic facts are always well researched, including an analysis in chapter 22 of this question: Why has no administration done more than pay lip service to border security? His conclusions are scary.

Beck is fond of saying that some things "cause blood to shoot from my eyes." Whether you like and enjoy him, or shoot blood from your eyes, this book has plenty of food for thought.

Based on statements in Beck's seventh chapter, I copied the following tables from the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

Crude Oil Imports (Top 15 Countries) (Thousand Barrels per Day)
Country	May-08	Apr-08	YTD 2008	May-07	YTD 2007
CANADA	1,840	1,952	1,889	1,821	1,841
SAUDI ARABIA	1,579	1,453	1,531	1,574	1,402
MEXICO	1,116	1,259	1,207	1,461	1,469
VENEZUELA	1,030	1,019	998	1,232	1,103
NIGERIA	851	1,115	1,053	882	1,047
IRAQ	583	679	670	341	458
ANGOLA	464	579	468	680	581
ALGERIA	440	393	329	496	495
BRAZIL	318	201	209	152	170
KUWAIT	263	176	227	162	182
COLOMBIA	245	149	184	104	101
ECUADOR	162	160	194	201	200
RUSSIA	119	106	86	232	156
LIBYA	96	85	73	33	51
EQUATORIAL GUINEA	93	40	58	0	52

Total Imports of Petroleum (Top 15 Countries) (Thousand Barrels per Day)
Country	May-08	Apr-08	YTD 2008	May-07	YTD 2007
CANADA	2,265	2,534	2,478	2,462	2,432
SAUDI ARABIA	1,604	1,462	1,547	1,614	1,427
MEXICO	1,209	1,364	1,313	1,617	1,604
VENEZUELA	1,166	1,189	1,162	1,520	1,354
NIGERIA	909	1,221	1,104	964	1,100
ALGERIA	611	632	542	744	723
IRAQ	583	679	670	341	458
ANGOLA	476	591	478	692	596
RUSSIA	407	402	410	499	421
VIRGIN ISLANDS	336	340	339	287	340
BRAZIL	332	234	232	203	218
COLOMBIA	278	169	210	122	114
KUWAIT	263	181	230	168	190
UNITED KINGDOM	218	229	207	390	306
NORWAY	176	137	116	234	167

Passing one by

kw: opinion, book note

As my most recent "wild card" choice, I picked Blood on the Table by Colin Evans. It is subtitled The Greatest Cases of New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Having read the first chapter and half the second, I've decided not to continue.

The book is clearly superbly written and well done. However, as a person determinedly wrapped up in the dispensing of life, I found its emphasis on murder and suicide just too much. I should have guessed, considering that the title and introduction make clear it is about the "super coroner" position, pioneered by New York City just ninety years ago. Of course, coroners' "great cases" have to do with figuring out the How's and Why's of death.

So I'll pass it by, in favor of a book of war correspondence. The focus in this book, at least, is on the lives of people affected by war, more than upon the deaths of those the survivors are bereaved of. Stay tuned.

Global warming and cooling - the view from 50-plus million years

kw: opinion, global warming

Body of a Letter to my Dad: All my brothers are politically liberal, and one in particular apparently believes "Global Warming is All Our Fault". My Dad and I are more conservative. I am probably more moderate, because I believe human activity is responsible for between one-quarter and one-half of the rise in global temperatures since the 1950s. However, I do not give much credence to the gloomy predictions found in an increasing number of books and "journalism" related to the subject.

I have gathered four charts found in the Wikipedia Commons, a great resource for materials that can be used freely, as long as their source is referenced. Click on any of these images to see a larger version, typically 600-700 pixels wide.

The first chart shows a composite summary of Holocene temperatures, a weighted average of many proxies, some of which are shown in various colors, to illustrate the uncertainty of such a record. A proxy is something we can measure today, such as Oxygen isotope ratios in tree rings or clam shells, that have a known relationship to global temperature. The Holocene period, also called "Recent", is the past 11,000 years, since the end of the most recent Ice Age.

As far as I can find out, the zero-temperature-difference line is pegged to the 1980 global temperature, about a quarter degree C (half a degree F) warmer than that in 1950. First pay attention to the inset, which covers the Christian Era. This began with a bit of cooling about 100AD, then warmed toward the Medieval Optimum which ended with the Little Ice Age (LIA) that ran from the 1400s to about 1880.

On a longer scale we find that, since just over 10,000 years ago, the Holocene has been both warmer and cooler than today, but overall it has been remarkably stable, within half a degree C of the 1980s value. On a particular day of the week, a degree or two is too small to notice, but the amount of energy in a one-degree shift in global average temperature is quite significant.

The period from 4,000 to 8,000 years ago, marked "Climatic Optimum?", marks the period when agriculture and citified civilization became widespread. All of the modern grains and other major crops were domesticated during this period. Funny thing...for the past 4,000 years, these crops have been "thriving" in a somewhat cooler world than that to which they are best adapted. It may be that the "2004" temperature suits them better!

This chart's scale is too small to show the "hockey stick" graph we often see, showing just the past 2,000 years, which were extra-stable (even including LIA), followed by a one-degree uptick beginning less than 100 years ago. Interestingly, that uptick almost matches the one that occurred 8,200 years ago. One human lifetime is such a short interval...

Let's expand the scale by a factor of forty, and look at the entire "Ice Ages" record, as it was thought of until recently. These proxy temperatures are from two ice cores extracted in Antarctica; the EPICA core goes back nearly one million years. I'd hate to be the guy that counted 850,000+ dust bands!

Concentrate first on the blue line. Four glacial periods, and the end of an earlier, fifth one, plus five interglacial periods, are evident. Both the black line and the blue line show that the modern interglacial period, the Holocene, is the coolest of the four...so far. We'll get back to this later on. The most recent prior interglacial period is called the Eemian, and it began with a pulse that got as warm as five degrees C (9°F) above the 1950s zero line, for a thousand or two thousand years. The key element here is the roughly 100,000-year cycle of ice ages. Earlier on, they were more frequent, as shown in the next chart.

This chart is composed of data from several ice cores and a number of other proxies. It goes back halfway to the most recent glaciation of Antarctica, which was 12 million years ago. The primarily 100,000-year ice cycle began just over a million years ago. Prior to that, it was closer to 40,000 years. The gradually-increasing amplitude of icing events beginning 3 million years ago, late in the Pliocene era, is probably associated with the irruption of Panama cutting off the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and their gradual adjustment to being connected only via the Southern Ocean.

The 2.5 million years prior to the Holocene comprise the Pleistocene, which began geologically when temperate-latitude soil profiles began to be interrupted by periodic glaciation. Prior to that, the Pliocene was almost always warmer than today. Now let's take one more scale expansion, to look at climate since the large Dinosaurs were wiped out and the smaller ones began to evolve into birds.

The whole prior chart fits into the blue rectangle at lower left. The bright blue scale shows that, prior to ten million years ago, the climate was, with one short exception, warmer than three degrees C (five or six deg. F) warmer than the 1950 zero line. Prior to the late Eocene, or prior to 34 million years ago, the warming, compared to today, was four to twelve (!) degrees C, or 7-22 degrees F.

Let's look briefly at the spike called PETM, in the yellowish area. This is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. It was apparently caused by a sudden gush of carbonic gases into the atmosphere when volcanoes began to erupt in a new area of the seabed, releasing billions of tons of methane clathrates. Methane gas oxidizes in the atmosphere to carbon dioxide, on a scale of a few decades. But here, for more than a thousand years, these two gases were put into the atmosphere at a rate that roughly equals the human-caused influx of today. So, a thousand years of excess carbonic gases caused a sudden temperature excursion of about two degrees C. That's it. And when the volcanoes cooled down, so did the planet...just as fast.

Based on all the forgoing, we can ask a few questions:

• Predictions are being made that the globe will warm as much as six degrees C (11 °F) by the year 2100AD, or around 150 years of human emission of carbonic gases. How do such predictions square with the PETM of two °C after ten centuries?
• Recent coral bleaching events have led to predictions that another degree or two of warming will cause the extinction of corals. Corals of all ages are found, including those that thrived during the "Eocene Optimum" when even polar oceans were bathtub-warm. Have corals become so fragile?
• Antarctica froze over for the first time 34 million years ago, them melted off suddenly 24 million years ago. All without benefit of people burning coal. What happened?
• It is known that many crops grow best when carbon dioxide is five times as abundant as it is today. Such levels were common in earlier times. Why would a rise in CO2 today be such a threat?
• CO2 levels during the Pleistocene have been lower than in any earlier time. This is probably due to C4 photosynthesis evolving in the Pliocene or Miocene. If there were no C4 photosynthesis, isn't it likely that Carbon Dioxide would remain at a much higher level than today?
• Based on the former questions, doesn't it make sense to talk about growing grass rather than trees to sequester the gas? Trees don't grow very efficiently at the low modern concentration of CO2 gas!
• There are many claims of extinction, perhaps of a quarter to a half of all species. (Note, "all animal and plant species" is meant. Bacteria have much wider tolerance for thermal swings) Neither the PETM nor the sudden Antarctic melting prior the Miocene caused such levels of extinction. Why the hype?
• A closer look at the second chart shows smaller wiggles that seem to cover 1,000-3,000 years each, with a height of a degree or less, mainly during the cooler, icy phases. These are harder to trace in the interglacial periods. However, Gerald Bond and his colleagues discerned eight "Bond events" since 11,000 years ago, the most recent of which is the LIA. We are in a warming phase betwen Bond events. How does this affect global warming predictions? This last is why I say our gases may be responsible for no more than one-quarter of the recent warming.

I am no "global warming denier", but neither am I an uncritical believer. As a Geologist, I am accustomed to thinking in tens to hundreds of millions of years. On such a scale, researchers (whether humans or super-roaches) of the distant future are likely to look upon our period as a mini-PETM at worst. We're going to run out of fossil fuels before we can spit out as much gas as the PETM event did. And it was a two-degree anomaly. We have no clue to what caused the ten degrees C of warming that it sat on top of!