Here Comes The Sun

It has seemed unlikely to me (in my ignorance) that solar panels, windmills, etc., can replace the energy drawn from fossil fuels by six billion people. Fossil fuels cause climate change. We are beginning to suffer the consequences of climate change, and we should start talking about how we will handle that. Meanwhile, according to The New Yorker (March 3, 2014), scientists and engineers might be on the verge of creating a thousand small suns. These suns will radiate enormous nonpolluting power, leaving no radioactive residue.

In an alpine forest in the south of France, 35 nations have combined to begin building a 20 billion dollar nuclear fusion plant. The purpose of the plant, first envisioned by two Russians, Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm, sixty years ago, will be to make and contain what sounds to me like a tiny Sun, held captive in a "magnetic bottle" by superconducting magnets. This creation will run hotter than the Sun. You can't keep it in a paper sack. 

If the fusion plant works, our energy problems will be solved. If not, we'll try something else.  




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Deb and Mike

Deb Fudge, three-time mayor of  Windsor and now a candidate for county supervisor, is talking about the town's program to save water. In the program's first year, participants removed over 40,000 square feet of lawn and saved almost 6 million gallons of water per year. Fudge worked hard to start this project, the first of its kind in California. I intend to vote for her. 

In general, candidates for state office in California get on the ballot by paying a filing fee. Mike McGuire, local candidate for the state senate, qualified for the ballot by turning in petitions signed by 3,030 people. Mike says that he's the only state candidate to do that. In my opinion Mike has a lead--but he's going to run full tilt until the polls close.

Death Before Dishonor

When asked about global warming during his disastrous Presidency, George W. Bush said, in effect, we'd better adjust to it. At the time he sounded like the fool he is. We still had a few moments in which to slow down or avert the worst consequences of climate change. Today Bush's advice resonates, because we have only two options remaining. We can do nothing and let climate change bring on catastrophes, or we can get ready for what is ahead of us. We can adjust. In smarter countries, preparations have begun. In this country we are still pretending that the cranks who deny science are worthy of debate. We give nutters equal time on TV!  

We are not working on a national water system. We are not building dikes to hold back the sea. We are not making major adjustments, just tinkering around the edges. The future? Preparing for the future would require Big Government projects. And anything the government does attacks our freedom. We'd rather die.  

 

I JOIN PUSSY RIOT

Russia, the land of snow (and Snowden and whistle-blowing these days), is the home of Pussy Riot, a punk rock protest group. Its core is about 11 women accompanied by 15 helpers. Pussy Riot supports women's rights and gay rights. It does not perform for money. It's kind of an anarchist shock group--like the Yippies in the 1960s. The group is not popular in Russia (6% like it), although some of their songs have promising titles: "Release the Cobblestones" and "Mother of God, Drive Putin Away." Two of the key members spent two years in jail recently for their impudence.

Last week Pussy Riot assembled in Sochi and began a song in a public space. They were immediately attacked with whips and pepper spray by Cossacks. This approach to dissidence sounds nostalgic, I know. In Russia, where the Cossacks, a Slavic people, have long lived in semi-military enclaves, they have often been used as shock troops or as a police force. Putin sent the Cossacks to thrash the young women, which they did with great vigor on camera. You can see it on the 'net, where, of course, Pussy Riot has set the beating to music. Another raised finger to Putin.

I saw on Colbert's program that anyone can join Pussy Riot as a supporting member. That doesn't mean I get to speak for the group or to vote (if, as anarchists, they even hold votes). I am free, however, to go on being myself. 

PBS 4 Sale

The following rant was triggered by an article written by David Sirota, a well-known journalist and activist who has worked for the Huffington Post, Sen. Bernie Sanders and THE NATION. (You can probably google his article: "REVEALING THE SECRET CORRUPTION INSIDE PBS's NEWS.")

I gave up on PBS News ten years ago on the grounds that it lived in namby-pamby land and generally supported a mildly Republican lifestyle. That had not always been the case, but in time people like Jim Lehrer lost all credibility on issues of life and death. I started watching BBC, which does not depend on corporate money to finance its news department.

David Sirota points out that PBS recently announced a new two-year series called "The Pension Peril." This series has been funded by former Enron trader John Arnold, a billionaire financing a national campaign to end public employee retirement benefits. Dick Army works for him. In Arnold's favor, he did not approach PBS with this concept. He did not set out to buy PBS News. They came to him.

42

In the eighth grade my teacher was an affable young man known to us as Mr. Flanagan, and the major league baseball team I followed--the teams were Back East--was the Brooklyn Dodgers. That was the team of Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider--local men--and the rest of the Boys of Summer. As it turned out, Flanagan had played on the UCLA baseball team with Robinson, and one afternoon he told us that Jackie Robinson had been an unusually aggressive and difficult person to be around. I don't think he liked Robinson. Flanagan was a serious and pleasant teacher. He wasn't the best teacher I ever had: that was a woman whose name I've forgotten who taught her class to listen to classical music, make paper from rags, set type by hand, and so on. But Flanagan was a good teacher. Neither he nor I had any idea what Jackie Robinson had dealt with in growing up and earning that 42 on the back of his jersey, the only number retired by every team in the show.

Our Common Ancestor

Opponents of modern science sometimes say that biology insists that six million years ago our ancestors were apes. Defenders of Darwinism sometimes reply that what science actually claims is that apes and humans have a common ancestor from which both descended. That begs the question: who the hell was this common ancestor? Was she an ape?

This question is not to be confused with the fake missing link question, which is what is the missing link between apelike animals and civilized people? (The answer is obvious: the Tea Party.) But who was the last ancestor of both chimpanzees and humans? Science remains uncertain. One candidate, for example, is the orririn, who might be in the ancestry of both species (or might not). Science is discussing this among itself.

How to Decode Issues: Fluoridation

If you approach fluoridation as a health issue, then what matters is your attitude toward science and scientific organizations. I am not a scientist myself, and, of course, I have not run an experiment design to measure how effective or deadly fluoridation is. I rely on work done by experts.

I am aware that more than 60% of Americans drink fluoridated water. Others use fluoridated toothpaste. Many have done so throughout their lives. I can look at all this usage as a gigantic test of fluoridation. According to the World Health Organization, the effect has been beneficial.

I read that the functions of fluoridated water are to slow tooth decay and to rebuild tooth enamel. Fluoridation is endorsed by the World Health Organization, the dental societies of Europe, Canada, Australia, the United States, etc. It is endorsed by the Surgeon General and the  Center for Disease Control. The National Academy of Sciences report that there is no evidence fluoridation causes cancer or any other problem except, in rare cases, discoloration of the teeth. The cost of fluoridated water runs about one dollar per person per year. I would guess that those who benefit most are poor children without access to fluoridated toothpaste. 

The counter arguments are (1) in a free society, a parent has the right to let his children's teeth rot (really?); and (2) if you take in too much fluoride or salt or water you will die (true); and (3) a tiny number of scientists oppose the use of fluoride (so what?); and (3) science is not absolutely certain that the use of fluoride is helpful (true). Science is not absolute about much. Science does have a few laws, but they are actually explanations that are so well tested that we can, for the time being, take them for granted. Examples might be the theory that the world is billions of years old, the theory of gravity and the theory of natural selection. These theories may be modified in the future, but for now they do us good service. They help scientists make flu vaccines.

It comes down to this. I am not a scientist. I must, as a rational person, trust the solidly established science of my era. And I have no idea how to talk to a clerk who believes that he or she knows more about the impact of fluoridated water than the World Health Organization.

Benghazi

When I asked whom I should marry, the answer came: Benghazi. I spat in the palm of my hand, and in the reflection on the surface of the saliva I saw Benghazi.  I threw my handkerchief down; it landed on Benghazi. A synonym for "cigarette" is Benghazi. What is the true end of man? Benghazi. How long is God's arm? Benghazi.  Tonight the wind will blow something across my cement driveway, something small, hard and acornlike in the porch light. It will be Benghazi.

The Best Team Ever

One of my daughters and her husband teach at USF, a tiny Jesuit college high on a hill in San Francisco, but I remember USF from my youth. I went to UCLA where my roommate, a black football player on an undefeated team, insisted I go to a basketball game to see a USF sophomore named Bill Russell. Russell did make my eyes bug. He changed the way basketball is played. UCLA won, and that was the last game USF lost in the next 2.5 years. That was a great team but not the greatest in history. The best team ever, hard as it is to believe, was the USF football team of 1951, the last football squad the small college could afford. Their final season made them immortal.

The football team went undefeated, produced nine players who joined the National Football League, and sent three players to the professional football hall of fame. At the end of the 1951 season, the team was invited to play in the Orange Bowl, provided only that their two African American players stayed home. The team took a vote. They all stayed home. That's the best team ever. 

On how many college football teams does every member get an honorary Ph.D? (You can catch the story today, Sunday, on ESPN.)

Mr. James Crowe

When I was young, the American South was the land of Jim Crow and lynching. As luck would have it, I went to UCLA where tuition was free for everyone, and I ended up rooming with a bunch of black football players. Those were the days. Then came the civil rights movement, which I supported, and the freedom riders, some of whom got murdered by degenerate yokels. 

I served in the army. I marched on Washington. Things seemed to be improving but Martin, Bobby and John were killed, and that's all in the textbooks now. Children study it as ancient history, but they don't really need to, because the South and some other states are once again the land of Jim Crow and lynching by yokels.

Of course the names have changed. Now Mississippi is the land of voter suppression and stand-your-ground laws. My point is that it's the same damned thing. It's still the KKK, with a new name, guarding the polls against black and brown voters, holding them down with racist laws, keeping the Robert E. Lees in power. It's an old white man shooting up a parked car filled with unarmed black teenagers, then claiming in court he was standing his ground. I think our students should be studying the present, studying the country they live in today, the new varieties of lynching and that polite old guy, Mr. James Crowe.

It's Always Sunny

IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA is a sit-com about a character who is exceptionally stupid and self-centered. Actually it is about five characters who are exceptionally stupid and self-centered. The five of them do variations on one joke over and over. If you really like that joke, it's a funny program.

Lies and Whispers

This morning I joined, as usual, a group of old men and women (Democrats, independents and one Republican) to discuss the news for two hours. We spent a good part of that time on yesterday's report from the Congressional Budget Office, a respectable nonpartisan source. Every one of us was under the impression that the report had predicted that the Affordable Care Act would cost the nation about two million jobs over a ten year period. We worried about that.

I get home and find out that the report had actually predicted that the ACA would increase the number of jobs over ten years. It also predicted that about two million people, once they had health care, would decide to retire early or move on to other work. The jobs would not be lost. They would be opened up for new hires. 

Why did we get the whole thing backwards? Because certain Republican leaders stood up in front of cameras yesterday and lied their heads off. They told us millions of jobs would be lost. They think we are idiots. We aren't (by a narrow margin).

The Beatles

We seem to be celebrating a Beatles anniversary on TV, which brings up the old question: "Who was more amazing than John and Yoko?'

Ans: John. 

Crime and the Artistic Elite

If you are among the elite in the arts and humanities, any crime you commit will be defended by a stream of articles and books written by those who appreciate the genuine contributions you have made to your field. I suppose that this is also true for the elite in other areas (the financial elite, the military elite, and so on). There is no act or situation that can't be defended on paper. Given Woody Allen's history of timid pursuit of teenagers, his daughter's account deserves attention.

When I was young, the troubling example of celebrity amnesty was the case of Ezra Pound, a major American poet and literary critic who lived out World War II in Italy defending Fascism and the hatred of Jews. After the Holocaust, not knowing what to do with him, our government put him in an insane asylum (although he wasn't insane), and some of the famous among our progressive community (including Jews) went to work and got him out. Was that the right thing to do? I suppose it was. I'm not sure.

Consider Martin Heidegger (a revered founder of existentialism and member of the Nazi party) and Paul de Man (a founder of deconstruction and a Jew-hating journalist during the Holocaust) and Roman Polanski (a great film director who drugged and raped a very young teenage girl in Hollywood, then fled to Europe). Consider Michael Jackson, still the King of Pop, defended by our entire entertainment industry. To what extent do we owe exceptional contributors amnesty? Or rationalizations or amnesia? We do owe them something. It remains open and troubling, the debate about Ezra Pound.

All this does, as some say, remind us of Edward Snowden, of which it is said that his only crime was that he broke the law. 

 




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The Monsters of Florence

THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE was a book covering true events in Italy 30 or 40 years ago. There was a serial killer at work. A succession of innocent people were put on trial, based on absurd conspiracy theories, and sentenced to prison. The real killer was never found.

In recent years we have watched from afar as a similar pattern has dogged a young American tourist named Amanda Knox. While in Italy her roommate was stabbed to death by a third party, now in prison. Knox and her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of some sort of conspiracy in the murder, based on DNA evidence later refuted. Their motive in the murder, according to the prosecutors, had something to do with their insistence on wild sexual excesses. A higher court threw out the case. Amanda Knox returned to the United States. Recently a new trial was held in Florence with Knox in absentia. This time she was accused of participating in the murder for an entirely new reason. A third party had left a toilet unflushed, so, the prosecutors argued, Knox had helped to kill her roommate. Knox, furnished with this compelling new motive, was found guilty again. The case will now go to a higher court, and Knox may face extradition (and our state department might give her up). 

Here's what I think. You shouldn't leave a used toilet unflushed except in a drought. That is especially the case in Italy, where the Romans practically invented plumbing. If you don't flush, an American girl will stab you to death while having wild sex. Consider this a fair warning.


Gary

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