The Shark-Infested Custard

Some time ago I picked up a lovely hardcover copy of Charles Willeford's The Shark-Infested Custard from my favorite shop, Ziesing Books, for just a few bucks. Mark and Cindy Zeising are an actual mom-and-pop outfit (one or the other answers the phone when you call) in the tiny burg of Shingletown, here in "true" Northern California. (It's strictly web and mail order, there's no storefront.) I finally got around to reading the book last week, and have had a little time to digest it, and thought I'd try to write a bit of a review.

The novel has four protagonists: Don, Eddie, Hank, and Larry. They are thirty-somethings living in Miami in the late 1970s when the city was at the crest of its population boom. They are obsessed with women, drinking, money, women, drinking, and money. The story is told from each of their points-of-view, two in first person and two in third person. Willeford, being a master, handles the transitions and changes in voice with easy grace. He has a laconic, straightforward style, but is a keen observer and wonderfully concise. The surgical precision of his prose makes even the simplest descriptions interesting, and the dialog has a crisp, realistic feel. The men are not particularly likeable. In fact, they are boorish, sexist, racist, self-centered jerks. And a bit pathetic, too. When they discuss their problems and reveal their attitudes, though, Willeford's lean, hard-boiled style makes what they think and feel seem ordinary and natural, even sympathetic. They are who they are, and Willeford holds them up for scrutiny but not judgment. It's like they are in a fishbowl--everything about their lives is visible even when you want it covered up.

Therein lies the appeal of the book, at least for me. Miami serves as a sort of symbol of American moral and spiritual decadence, the characters merely mouthpieces for all the possible sins of men. They lie, cheat, and steal. They are dishonest at work and unfaithful in their relationships, yet they are loyal friends and help each other out. They have reputable middle-class occupations like airline pilot, security administrator, and sales rep, and are good at their jobs, but have no compunction about scamming their bosses and co-workers. They view women as nothing more than sexual receptacles and connive to stay out of entanglements or get out of the ones they fall into. But Willeford writes with such convincing authority you actually root for the guys to clean up the messes they make, and the messes are pretty ugly and involve murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, and the like.

Charles Willeford is one of the highest-regarded of all crime/noir writers, and The Shark-Infested Custard shows off all his considerable strengths. It's viciously, scathingly funny, a dark, satiric look at The American Dream in all its twisted wretchedness. Few writers can handle such bleak material and turn it into a swift, readable tale, but Willeford is a particular talent. In fact, he should really be lumped in with "literary" writers and not "genre" fiction. His grasp of psychology and motivation, his unflinching look at ordinary, everyday evil, and his fluid, engaging style are light-years above many of the literature crowd's darlings. One of the most corrosive things the publishing world has done to the American novel is separate the MFA-types from the street-types, assuming that a high-falutin' degree from a famous writer's program automatically creates a superior work. I don't mean to say these things are bad--just that they are no guarantee of good. One day, perhaps, Americans will strip the labels off the works of great writers like Willeford, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, John D. MacDonald, Chester Himes, James M. Cain and others of their ilk and recognize their literary creations as substantial contributions to contemporary art and culture. Imagine if we read them in high school alongside F. Scott Fitzgerald or J.D. Salinger! That would make for some interesting discussions, don't you think?

The Oil Drum

I came across this website--The Oil Drum--some time ago, and I'm finding myself spending more and more time reading the posts there. It's hard going. They assume you know a hell of a lot about global energy and economics, and they use so many acronyms they have a FAQ for them. But two things keep me coming back. One, the site descriptor is "Discussions About Energy and Our Future." Who isn't interested in that? Two, their mission statement appeals to me:

1. Raise awareness

2. Host a civil discussion

3. Conduct original research in a transparent manner

4. Create a global information community working toward a common goal

Simple. Direct. Meaningful. Who could argue?

I tell my students that everything they know, love, and hold dear depends on cheap, abundant energy. Sure, the Bill of Rights is grand and all that, but without cheap, abundant energy it would all go "poof." Americans like to believe that their wealth and freedom is about the triumph of their ideology. Unfortunately, no ideology, no matter how righteous, trumps Nature. More specifically, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I like to say the First Law is "You Can't Get Something for Nothing." Seems reasonable to most people. That electricity you use to power your computer came from something like atomic fission, the burning of fossil fuels, or dammed water surging through penstocks. The Second Law, however, says "Shit Happens." More specifically, "Shit Has Always Happened and Will Keep Happening." Order, in any system, requires energy inputs. That energy stops coming in and the system will become disordered. Chaos is natural. The Gershwins understood:

In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble . . .

Yeah, that's about it. Everything requires energy to keep it going. Your house needs maintenance to keep it from falling down. You have to eat or you will wither away and die. You car needs gas or it won't go. Your society needs labor--both physical and mental--to sustain it. And the benefits you accrue from being a member of said society go along with that. In the days of the Founding Fathers there was human labor in abundance like indentured servants, debtors, and African slaves. There was also lots of easily-exploitable timber, water, and topsoil. It's not a coincidence that rights for women, immigrants, and African-Americans came AFTER the Industrial Revolution. Societies that don't have cheap, freely-available sources of energy are the same societies that have grinding poverty and oppressed citizens.

So, if you care about your future, your wealth, and your freedom, you care about energy and where it comes from. We, that is, the 300 million Americans and the 7 billion world citizens, have already plucked the ripest, juiciest, and lowest-hanging fruit on the energy tree. What's left is harder to reach. Aren't you the least bit curious about how we'll get it?

". . . the Eagle has landed."

Neil Armstrong flew the lunar module over a hostile, unknown terrain, coping with guidance errors and faulty computer alarms, and visually picked out a new landing spot as the targeted area was strewn with boulders. His companion, Buzz Aldrin, was reading the computer outputs of their velocity and altitude back to Houston on the radio and not even looking out his window. Armstrong set the Eagle down in the Sea of Tranquility with his trademark sangfroid and made history. You had to be a cool cat to do that. You had to have some mad piloting skills, too. The first man on the moon and commander of Apollo 11 died today at the age of 82. Michael Collins, pilot of the command module Columbia, was quoted on the NASA website saying “He was the best, and I will miss him terribly.” As an explorer, astronaut, aviator, engineer, teacher, spokesman, leader, and role model, it's hard to argue. He was a hero of my youth--I was nine years old on July 20th, 1969, and the great moon adventure captivated me completely. The drama of human spaceflight launched my life-long interest in science. The Korean War veteran was the first civilian to fly a spacecraft--all the Mercury Seven and the first Gemini class were active-duty officers at the time of their maiden flights. His enduring legacy, both uniquely American and thoroughly universal, is etched in a plaque he and Aldrin left on the lunar surface:

We came in peace for all mankind.

Anchors Aweigh my boys,

Anchors Aweigh.

Farewell to foreign shores,

We sail at break of day-ay-ay-ay.

O'er our last night ashore,

Drink to the foam!

Until we meet once more,

Here's wishing you a happy voyage home.

Dare Mighty Things

This Sunday, the 5th of August, at 2231 Pacific Daylight Time, the Curiosity rover is scheduled to land on the surface of Mars. The red planet, on average, is about 158 million miles away. That creates an interesting communication problem we don't experience here on terra firma. A radio signal--traveling at 186,000 miles per second--can circumnavigate the earth a little more than seven times in one second. The earth's circumference is about 25,000 miles, and geostationary satellites orbit at just short of that distance, or about 22,000 miles. Thus we earth-bound mortals do not notice any significant delay when we use phones or TVs. Rather, what I should say, is that any delay we do experience is not due to the speed of light. Even those large distances are nothing to an electromagnetic wave. But Mars is another story. Divide 158 million by 186,000 and you get 850 seconds, or about fourteen minutes. That's how long it will take a message from Curiosity to reach the army of scientists, engineers, technicians, and the rest of the people at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. When the spacecraft descends from orbit into the Martian atmosphere, it will take about seven minutes for all the stages to be completed and the rover to be set upon the surface. That means it will be seven additional minutes before they will know if everything was OK at the start of the descent. Add another fourteen minutes before anyone will know if the landing worked and Curiosity is intact and able to complete its mission. And if they need to send a signal to make a correction or initiate a program, they won't know if it has been received for another 28 minutes.

What agony! After months of planning, preparation, construction, and testing, not to mention the almost two years of space flight required to get to our planetary neighbor, the radio delay has to be an exquisite kind of torture. The Mars Science Laboratory is an ambitious effort, being ten times larger than the other Mars rovers and requiring a more complex deployment procedure. Unmanned, robotic space exploration is far better for science than putting people up there. When you use humans you have to spend so much time and energy keeping them alive that very little actual work gets done. These missions, nonetheless, are daring, sophisticated enterprises that ought to inspire awe and excitement amongst the citizenry. Here's something Americans are doing together, with public entities and private enterprise collaborating and cooperating. It isn't about party politics, and all the various ways we can divide ourselves into tribes and holler at each other about words and symbols are mercifully absent. Instead, our fellow humans are reaching for the stars, daring to do mighty things that will benefit all of us regardless of nation or creed.

I think it's fantastic, and I hope they succeed brilliantly. Some day Americans will return to space to explore beyond earth orbit, adding the drama of actual astronauts out there risking their necks in pursuit of our collective dreams. Right now, though, the pathfinders are charting the course for us, showing us the hazards, and revealing the engineering solutions we need to make the possibilities real. The men and women at JPL may not leave their seats, or go too far from their computer screens, but they are sowing the seeds for a 21st century Magellan to reap. Here's to a homegrown Cook emerging in the next decade or two! I can't wait much longer than that, I want to be young enough to jump for joy when he or she makes it, unlike those great captains, all the way safely home.

edX and the Future of the Human Race

My alma mater is no longer dipping its toes in the uncertain waters of the 21st century--it has stripped off its clothes and taken the full plunge. The University of California's flagship campus at Berkeley has joined MIT and Harvard in the X University Consortium to deliver college courses for free to anyone who has access to the internet. The project is known as edX and was created as a not-for-profit online-learning collaborative between those two world-famous private schools from Cambridge, Massachusetts. UC Berkeley, of course, is a public school. The UC/CSU system was once the jewel of California, offering the finest and most affordable higher education of any state in the union. I was one of those ordinary citizens whose life was transformed by this remarkable, visionary creation. I earned my undergraduate degree at Cal and my teaching credential at Cal State Hayward (now CSU East Bay) in the years 1977-1984, which really marked the end of the golden era. Costs soared after that, and budgets were slashed, but more importantly the belief in the dream, the political will needed to grow and improve faded from the public consciousness. Anti-intellectualism is now in the fore, and the government commitment to public education for all citizens is under fire by a new breed of "every man for himself" yahoos who seek only their own hegemony and lack any sense of social responsibility. The Golden State has lost its luster, and has only itself to blame--its citizens gobbled up the pablum served by this new breed of corporate fat cats and their army of dupes.

Throughout history education has been a luxury reserved for the upper classes. The idea of universal education is a recent one, only emerging in the last century. At the time of the Second World War, about half of school-age kids in the US finished high school. My dad, for example, quit school at 16 to work, then joined the Marines a year later in 1948. In my own generation (I was born in 1959), dropping out was almost unthinkable, and damn rare as well. I've worked in the state's secondary schools for 28 years, and I've seen plenty of failure, but illiteracy is so unusual as to be remarkable, and the vast majority of kids complete at least some kind of high school program even if they don't earn a traditional diploma. The schools are actually victims of their own success--high school is taken for granted. This extraordinary accomplishment of the modern world, the mass education of tens of millions on a global scale, is not seen for the near-miracle that it is. Consequently, we have neglected to view it with the necessary awe and respect and have failed to infuse it with a proper spirit of growth and renewal. Schools are political battlegrounds instead, and every election cycle sees a new batch of politicos and talking heads determined to undermine what's been built for no reason other than to serve their selfish ambitions.

The internet has been likened to the printing press for its transformative effect on society. Luther owed a lot to Gutenberg, actually, can you imagine the Reformation without that new communication technology? If we are to bring the benefits of education to the masses, the brick-and-mortar school will have to evolve. The internet, most people forget, was a government creation. Its existence is a continuing collaboration between public and private entities, proof that we can work together and build something that benefits all of society. I love the delicious irony of survivalist and anarchist websites--what could be more communal and collective than the World Wide Web?

I'm proud of my beloved mother. They've seen the future, and it's not all about dorm rooms and football. When amazing things like The Khan Academy are out there free for anyone with a modem, the message is loud and clear: change or die. The dream of a university education available to everyone may never be fully realized, but that does not mean that the goal is not a good one. Too many people in the world lack clean water and adequate food, and live in constant fear and want, and what's worse, see little hope of change. I like to think it's those people--the oppressed and dispossessed--who will ultimately benefit from things like edX. Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I believe a new generation of the traditionally under-served and under-represented who get the chance to succeed will not forget their roots and will use their knowledge and opportunities to help those who are less fortunate. That was once the ethic of this country, and I think it can be again. The creation of a free on-line university education is a baby step, nothing more. It will take more than that to see the dream come true. But all journeys have to start somewhere. UC Berkeley's motto is Fiat lux, taken straight from Genesis, chapter one, verse three: Let there be light.

Indeed.

O'Connor's Three Laws of Science

I often tell my students about O'Connor's Three Laws of Science. I was inspired by Newton, of course, as his Three Laws of Motion are the jump-off point for many explorations of mechanical phenomena. My laws are more abstract, and are about the nature of science itself, not about a specific area of study. Number One: all measurements are uncertain. I like to say the corollary to Number One is find the degree of uncertainty you are willing to live with. If you are rough-framing a house with 2x4s, being off now and then by a quarter of an inch is no big deal. If you are building cabinets, however, being off a quarter of an inch is a catastrophe. Measure as precisely as you need to. And please don't tell me the answer with the eight decimal places your calculator gave you! People on a diet care about pounds, not ounces. Number Two: science is a description of nature, not an explanation. As Alfred Korzybski opined, "the map is not the territory." Science does not concern itself with Truth, and at least, in my view, it should not. Leave that to philosophers and holy men. They can talk all they want about the subjective and the mystical, none of those things can withstand the rigors of experimentation. Science requires repeatability--if you can't get my results then one of us is wrong. I don't mean to say that subjective experiences aren't real, they just aren't amenable to analysis. Scientific "truths" are contextual, that is, they are only as good as the paradigm they fit within. (I use that word in the sense that Thomas Kuhn did in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.) All experiments operate within a theory of how nature works. Scientists don't investigate randomly--they look for things they believe they "should" find, that is, what the theory (or dominant paradigm) predicts. Or they look at anomalies, things that don't fit the theory, and try to enlarge their understanding so that these outliers will fit within the current models. Only when the paradigm fails to produce satisfying (i.e., consistent) results does a "revolution" occur. Think Copernicus, or Einstein. Nature doesn't change, only our way of seeing it. Number Three: correlation does not imply causality. The Romans would have said "post hoc, ergo propter hoc." That's a logical fallacy, and the Greeks (Rome's teachers) would have drilled that notion into their rhetoric students. Just because A happens after B does not mean that A causes B to happen. The sun rises after my alarm goes off. If I turn off my clock, will that plunge the world into darkness? We see this sort of thinking every day, especially in politics. So-and-so got elected and then the economy (or whatever) did this-or-that, obviously so-and-so deserves the credit or blame. I remember when everyone got excited that sunspot cycles appeared to correlate with drought in California. That's it! Explanation! Mystery solved! Until the drought persisted, of course, and we were left once again with the complexity of the global climate system.

So that's it. Science in a nutshell. And I like to end my talk with my favorite line from Shakespeare:

               There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
               Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
               (Hamlet, Act I, scene V).

To me, this means never underestimate nature. The vastness of the universe should awe us and keep us humble. Science is a product of the human mind, and is thus subject to all the vagaries and frailties of humankind. It is also the most powerful and most fruitful of all human endeavors. Without science, I would like to note, religions would have nothing to talk about. The pope, for example, spends a lot of time on birth control. The pill wasn't invented by priests, man. I'm not religious, as you might imagine, but I also don't really see the supposed conflict between science and religion. After all, religion is about things that cannot be measured or experimented upon. Religions don't have "testable" questions. If people want to believe that tablets with God's Laws on them were handed out to Moses or discovered by Joseph Smith, that's all fine and dandy. Science can't respond to such notions because they cannot be falsified. Many scientists possess religious faith (like Newton, for example), and that seems to make the point moot, don't you think? A belief in the afterlife won't prevent anyone from determining the chemical composition of nebula, and reading the gospels won't stop a polymerase chain reaction.

Sorry for the long-winded rant, I got inspired this morning when I dropped in the on the website BETTER EXPLAINED and read their delightful thumbnail sketch of Bayes' Theorem. Good stuff, check it out!

Skepticism

According to Eric Partridge, my word guru, "skeptic" is from Greek and means "doubt." Skepticism is a good thing. In science, it is crucial. Many confuse the meaning of the word with that of "cynic." Having been accused--many times--of being a cynic, I'm used to the mix-up. The ancients who called themselves Cynics ("the snarlers") were contemptuous of society's conventions but nonetheless strove for virtuous conduct. The modern meaning of cynic is one who doubts all motives but selfishness. That is, a person who does not believe altruism exists. This has nothing to do with asking good questions and demanding to see the evidence before making a conclusion. People don't like skeptics because skeptics don't like sloppy thinking. Skeptics like to account for all the possibilities before embracing a course of action. This often comes across as contrariness or obstructionism, but it is really just trying to see things as clearly as possible.

Those in the American political scene who doubt the science behind climate change are called skeptics, but this does a disservice to real skeptics. Real skeptics are not merely deniers. Real skeptics look for flaws in an argument and demand to be convinced with logic and facts. Deniers don't require that sort of rigor. They already have their minds made up and you won't get anywhere with them using silly things like evidence. One skeptical scientist--Richard Muller of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore Lab--recently published a piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining what his current research has revealed about global warming. His was a sort of meta-research as his team looked at already-existing data and analyzed its reliability. They concluded that the numbers were good--global temperatures are on the rise. They made no statement about whether the cause is anthropogenic, but that wasn't the point of the study. Here's Dr. Muller:

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

That's science in a nutshell. If the data is good, it will hold up to scrutiny. If the methods are good, the data is trustworthy. Transparency and openness lead to progress. This is exactly the opposite of politics, where lies and half-truths are the meat-and-potatoes of campaigning. Where secrecy, denial, and re-writing history are the essential skills candidates master. Where visceral responses are more important than analysis and where being brainy is a handicap. Screw politics and learn to think like a scientist!

Read some more about Muller and the BEST project here.

The war to end all wars

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, an armistice was signed to end the war. It wasn't called World War One then, of course. It was simply The War or even The Great War. The slaughter and futility of that dark time in human history did not quite make the impression on men and nations that it should have. Humanity had to go and do it all again, bigger and better this time, and call it World War Two. Some day, perhaps, we'll learn. I'd love to live long enough to see the last of all wars. I dream of a time when no one will ever have to bear arms against another. Unfortunately, that is not the world I live in. Politics, ideology, racism, fear, ignorance, and greed may fuel wars, but human beings fight them. People who put on a uniform usually do so to protect those they love. Nations will wrap their wars in the usual nonsense that nations wrap things in, making the killing of others more palatable to their citizens. But that doesn't take away from the fact that people serve their country and risk their lives for their families, their friends, and their fellow citizens. Armistice Day--the original 11/11--is no more. Now we call it Veterans Day. All of us have veterans in our lives. Think about them. Thank them. Wish them a good day. And wish for the day when we can all live in peace. After all, that is what they fought for.

Todos somos Chilenos

Your morning alarm is electrical, the pulses carried on copper wires. The coffee you make and the hot shower you take require copper wires and copper pipes. There is copper in the bronze hinges and drawer pulls in your closets and cabinets. There's copper in the brass buttons of your suit coat. You've got copper-clad pots to boil your eggs. Your computer and cell phone can't be made without copper. The electricity you pay two bits for two kilowatt-hours for is generated by huge, spinning bundles of copper wire. They work much like the windings in your car's alternator--more copper. You drive to work past homes and buildings whose veinous systems of copper wires and copper pipes keep them lit and habitable. The quarters you pump in the parking meter are disks of pure copper sandwiched between layers of a cupro-nickel alloy.

The United States consumes about two million metric tons of new copper in a year. A metric ton (aka tonne) is one thousand kilograms, or 2205 pounds. Two million of those is over 4.4 billion pounds. If there are 310 million Americans, that is 14 pounds of copper per person annually. If you live 80 years, that is 1120 pounds, or over half a ton (either kind!). The copper folks tell me a child born today will need 1500 pounds of copper to maintain our accustomed standard of living.

Chile is the world's largest copper producer, supplying about a third of the world's needs. The U.S. imports about a third of the copper it needs, and thus depends on Chilean output to augment domestic production and recycling. Copper is Chile's most important export, accounting for about 35% of the country's total. Copper mining and refining creates enormous environmental challenges for even the wealthiest countries, and the crisis in Chile has made the world aware of the hazards inherent in underground copper extraction. The dramatic news from Camp Hope that a rescue shaft has reached the thirty-three men trapped underground in the San Jose Mine has everyone optimistic that they will ultimately be rescued.

Everything we need for life is either grown or mined. Copper has been mined by human beings for millenia, it was one of the earliest metals our ancient forbearers utilized. Metalworking is one of the foundations of civilization, and its origins are somewhere in the mists of prehistory. Our modern way of life is even more dependent on the steady supply of copper and other metals. So we are all Chileans. Those men down there, they are our lifeline. They are literally our connection to the earth. Let us hope they all make it out safely, and that the next time they go down there, things will be better.

The World Cup

I'm only a mildly-interested football--er, soccer--fan, but I've watched quite a bit of the action from South Africa this year. That's mostly due to the new DishTV I had installed so I could watch my favorite baseball club, and the fact that the early-morning broadcasts fit my summer schedule nicely. I watched both group stage and knockout stage action, though I did miss the most of the U.S.-Ghana match. My rooting interest was simple: I wanted to see a new champion. I wanted the finals to involve teams that had never hoisted the Jules Rimet Trophy. That's worked out rather nicely, with Spain facing Holland, don't you think? I admit I was rooting for Germany--three-time champion--to beat Spain, but only because I like teams that score lots of goals, and Germany had soundly thrashed England and Argentina, scoring four goals in each match. Four goals is almost unprecedented in a competition where 1-0 is not only the most common score, but is also considered a decisive result. I'll admit, the dearth of goals is the main reason I can't get too excited by international football. They lads are certainly terrific athletes, and the steady flow and rhythm of passing and probing, passing and probing, can be entertaining. But goddammit, kick the fecking ball towards the net, will you? The game--at this level, is just too damn tactical and defensive. I think a team ought to feel that they can score, at the very least, one goal per half. That would make, for the most part, 3-2 and 2-1 results common rather than out of the ordinary. And don't get me started on the silliness of penalty kicks deciding championship games. I mean, should the World Series be decided by a home-run derby? Ye gods, that would be hideous. Being an American, I still have a hard time with "draws" as well. If FIFA restructured the group stages so that zero points were awarded for draws, just like for losses, you'd see a much more aggressive and attacking style of play as teams would have to go for the win. Spain, who certainly were the better club versus Germany, and deserved to win, has won its last three matches 1-0. Booooooooooring!!!! I have a feeling the final with Holland will end 1-0 as well, which would take some of the luster off the championship, at least for me. I also expect it will be Spain 1, Holland 0, as the Spanish team looks even more disciplined about possession and ball control than the Dutch team. We'll see, of course, it could be 90 minutes of cracking good football and end 4-3! But that would be a shocker. Perhaps the best thing about soccer is it requires so little time investment. The whole thing is over pretty quickly, what with the running clock and the short halftime. I can agree with fans that it is a beautiful game, but I cannot accept the notion that it is THE beautiful game. Sorry, that's a crock of snooty bullshit. Nor can I buy the idea that these guys are the "best" athletes in the world. Any sport played at an international level requires great athletes. I wonder how these fellows would do in ice hockey, where you have to skate like Michelle Kwan, crack heads like Ronnie Lott, and dribble, pass, and shoot like Kobe Bryant. With a stick, fer chrissakes! Trying to bully people into believing that one particular sport is the best with pronouncements like that makes me want to gag. Sure, I'll buy that it is the most popular sport in the world, but that is certainly not much of an argument. After all, Titanic is the most popular movie ever--does that make it the best? I don't think so.

That's my take on the World Cup. Congratulations to Spain and Holland for their success, and may the best squad take home the honors. And score some bloody goals, will ya?

2010 Dipshit Award

My 2010 Dipshit Award goes to this jackass:

Promiscuous women are responsible for earthquakes, a senior Iranian cleric has said.

His name is Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi. Here's more of his religious wisdom:

"Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes," he said.

Res ipsa loquitur.

I'm hella stoked

A young fellow from our neck of the woods got excited one day in science class at UC Davis. He decided that the slang term "hella" would make a good prefix in the SI system. Everyone is familiar with mega-and giga- from computerspeak, and most of us know a kilo-meter is a bunch of meters (1000, or 10^3). So far, the SI folks don't have a prefix for 10^27 (10 raised to the 27th power). This lad--Austin Sendek is his name--thinks "hella" would do nicely. I'm all for it. After all, we need more humor in science. There are only so many "Uranus" jokes to go around. To give you an idea of how big 10^27 is, the world's electric power usage** is about 2 tera-watts, or 2 x 10^12 watts. That's only 0.000000000000002 hella-watts!

There's a Facebook page about "hella" and the story made it across The Pond to The Daily Telegraph!


**The number is from Richard Muller's Physics for Future Presidents.

Steroids, moral outrage, and media blather

I guess I'm supposed to care that Mark McGwire used steroids. Rather, that he admitted that he used steroids. I don't. I don't care that he used them and I don't care that he admitted to using them. This is baseball, folks. Major League Baseball to be precise. It is a multi-billion dollar international entertainment industry. It is not a place for moral lessons. Mark McGwire wants a new job with MLB so he has to toe the party line and apologize regretfully for his past actions. That's it. There's no story and no substance. If he stayed retired he could (and should) keep his business to himself. How about this? You keep your business to yourself and I'll keep mine to myself. And if you are looking for a "solution" to the "steroid problem" then I have one: allow their use. These are drugs, folks. When properly prescribed, administered, and monitored, the danger and health consequences of these drugs become manageable. Just like other drugs in our multi-billion dollar international pharmaceutical world. Professional athletes use all sorts of medical technology to improve their performances and achieve at a higher level. More power to them. As long as they are ADULTS and aware of the risks they should be able to do whatever they want. Just like any other citizen.

That's enough of that.

Spring training is just weeks away! Nothing makes a baseball fan happier--other than the actual start of the season!

Manny, Mothers, and Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball sure wants you to know all about Manuel Aristides Onelcida Ramirez' urine. That trademarked and copyrighted fairytale-factory wants you to care a lot about what's in a grown man's bloodstream. But I don't. I'm one of those baseball fans that doesn't want to know or need to know. Sportswriters are a funny beast--they project much of their fantasies about athletic achievement on to the athletes they cover. They assign them roles in a myth, and rank them as heroes or villains. The billionaires who own the clubs don't care, they've got PR departments and advertising budgets. Slap on a heavy coat of patriotism and motherhood and you've got a product. These same billionaires convince cities to pump tax dollars into corporate playgrounds called ballparks. The business these same billionaires are in enjoys a Congressionally-approved monopoly status. Major League Baseball has Budweiser and Chevrolet to sell. If one of the heroes is tarnished by something he ate, fewer people might buy Budweiser and Chevrolet, and that would be bad for America. Manny is a hero--and when he falls, he falls hard. At least that's what Major League Baseball wants you to think. Manny's a damn fine ballplayer. I don't know if he's a damn fine man or not. That's his business. And as long as he's not hurting anyone, I'm damn sure I don't care. I have a hero. My mother is my hero. I'd be willing to bet mothers are heroes to a lot a people. Look for the heroes closest to you. And let plumbers be plumbers and ballplayers be ballplayers, and let them have whatever makes them happy. Happy Mothers Day.

US v. Bonds

Try not to follow the mainstream media on this one. For a good take, as always, read Dave Zirin (Edge of Sports). He's too lefty for some, and I'll admit that his political rhetoric can sometimes soar above his logic, but he's a sharp observer and a good writer. His latest piece, on the Bonds case, is in The Nation. It sums up the whole pathetic episode nicely.

If you want to dig a little deeper, a fellow by the name of John Perricone has been blogging on baseball matters since 2002, which is an eternity in blog-years. His blog, appropriately, is called Only Baseball Matters. His work on Bonds and PEDs is the most informed and most interesting out there. Don't read his stuff unless you want to think and learn. Mr. Perricone has recently drawn the attention of two heavy hitters in the sports-writing world, ESPN's Peter Gammons (22 Feb) and Rob Neyer (23 Feb). How's that for blog power?

Another smart fellow with a razor-sharp pen is John Brattain. Take a look at his stuff on The Hardball Times. Craig Calcaterra (ShysterBall) is also on the THT masthead and looks at baseball through a lawyer's eyes. More good stuff.

Not enough? Try this site: http://steroids-and-baseball.com/

Then go back to living real life and hope the money and momentum runs out on the Bonds case and we can get back to baseball.


UPDATE: a couple of new links to articles by Jonathan Littman in Playboy magazine (via OBM):
1. "The Persecution of Barry Bonds" (2009)
2. "The Balco Story" (2004)

Wow--this Novitsky character comes off as a real asshole. We already knew that Bush and Ashcroft were assholes--it seems they and their minions were happy to preside over government agencies run amok. Nothing like trashing peoples' rights and livelihoods to make a political point.

A-Roid, Bar-roid, and the Collapse of Reason

From the posturing, pontificating, and punditry we've seen so far about the "steroids scandal," you'd think the country was collapsing into lawlessness. What's collpasing all about us, of course, is a sense of perspective. Let's take a reasonable look at this mess.

Professional athletes take some drugs that may or may not improve their performances. Then they lie about it. Then they get caught. Then they lie some more, or they go to great lengths to apologize and "rehabilitate" their downward-spiraling public images. The Feds run around trying to "get" the bad guys on drugs charges, or failing that, perjury and/or obstruction charges. The sporting press has a field day, excoriating their "role models" for setting a bad example for kids and for violating the supposed "integrity" of the sports they cover.

A few athletes--professionals, mind you--risk their health, their careers, and now their freedom by taking these drugs. They are the only ones being hurt. The Feds aren't being hurt. The sportswriters aren't being hurt. And for all the hyperbole, the children aren't being hurt. Sure, a handful of amateur athletes hurt themselves. But not enough to make a "crisis." Steroids and HGH and PEDs are not a danger. Teenagers have plenty of good old-fashioned dangers (like drinking and driving) to hurt themselves and others with. There may be law-breaking here, but there is no crime. That is, there is no criminal intent and no collateral damage. There's just some drugs, and some guys taking them.

I'm sure the world is a safer, freer, and better place because Marion Jones gave up her gold medals and went to jail. I'm sure when mothers tuck in their babes at night they are reassured that monsters like Barry Bonds will get what's coming to them. Floyd Landis lost a race that he won, and the starving millions rejoiced that he got his comeuppance.

Baseball, that pure and sacred American endeavor is now safe and unsullied. We can go back to the multi-million dollar ballyards and cheer again for our upright and honest heroes. We can watch "Field of Dreams" again and wallow in a nostalgia for a past that fulfills our fantasies. Meanwhile, some guys who took some drugs go to court, or to jail, or to ignominy and disgrace.

"Cheating" in sports is a problem for the sport, not for Congress. Risky behaviors by teens are a problem for parents, not the U.S. Attorney. Your body--and what you put in it--is your business. Same for those guys. If a goverment can spend millions of taxpayers dollars to go after some jocks with little or no public oversight or outrage, imagine what they can do when they go after "regular" folks who don't have high-priced lawyers and fancy publicists. And when they start to come after you for your alleged indiscretions, and threaten your privacy and your livelihood and your freedom, you'll cry out, bewildered by it all, "but I wasn't hurting anyone!" and "this is America!" and "where's my lawyer?"

But no one will be listening.

Tempest in a teapot

Quite the stir created by our President-elect recently, eh? Seems a lot of his supporters don't like this Rick Warren fellow, and especially don't like that Mr. Obama asked him to deliver the inaugural prayer. I don't like bigotry. I don't like fundamentalism. I think LGBT folks get the shaft regularly in this country (and most of the rest of the world). I can't blame some of those folks for being pissed off. But this is a tempest in a teapot.

Obama is a "big tent" sort of guy. He means it when he says he wants to work with all Americans and wants to represent all Americans. Evangelical Christians are a large part of our country. Ergo, Obama will work--or at least attempt to work--on their behalf.

This is a prayer. Not a cabinet post. You want a prayer, you get a reverend/rabbi/priest/pastor/etc. Mr. Warren is some sort of reverend/pastor type. Mr. Obama is also a very religious man. (This is my least favorite part of his personality.) I don't have much use for religion, but apparently he does. So I expect we'll get some Executive Religiosity during his tenure as POTUS. I'm prepared to accept that--lots of folks are religious. Most Americans, in fact.

Mr. Obama is also his own man. He doesn't "owe" anyone. He has no political constituency, he is not beholden to any interest group. THIS IS WHY 65 MILLION PEOPLE VOTED FOR HIM. That means he's going to make decisions that he thinks are right, and the flip side of that independence means he's going to disappoint some people. Too bad. Get over it.

The President-elect is a smart, determined public servant. He wants to solve problems and get things done. He's not swayed by ideology. He's sick of the culture wars. I recently watched an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart where Mike Huckabee was the guest. They engaged in a passionate and intelligent discussion of the "gay marriage" issue. Mr. Stewart profoundly disagreed with Mr. Huckabee, and told him so. Mr. Huckabee was the interloper, the odd-ball facing the strongly pro-Stewart (bordeline sycophantic) audience. You know something? They were polite. They were respectful. They shook hands like real men and showed a genuine affection for each other. That's a good thing. It's a model for how we should ALL conduct ourselves.

Our energy future

In February of last year the University of California at Berkeley announced a partnership with BP to create the Energy Biosciences Institute. This 10-year, $500 million dollar venture was viewed with skepticism by some, to say the least. One of the key players in the new project was Dr. Steven Chu, Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The article in California magazine (Sep/Oct 2007) by Lisa Margonelli quoted Dr. Chu thusly: "We are seeking industry partnerships . . . We seek solutions. We don't seek, dare I say, science papers anymore." (italics mine)

Today's news is that Dr. Chu has been asked by President-elect Obama to head the Department of Energy. The Quantum Pontiff, my source for all things physics, likes the move. I do, too. One, we get a really smart, accomplished guy. Two, we get a really smart, accomplished guy. And three, well, he's a really smart guy. And has a C.V. to die for. (OK, so he's a Stanfurd guy. Go Bears!)

I want to wish Dr. Chu "good luck" with his new job in Obama's cabinet. I think he's a brilliant choice. We need all the brains, energy, vision, desire, commitment, inspiration and perspiration we can get when we tackle the issues facing us in the 21st century. After eight years of an administration that seemed hopelessly anti-science, we have a Nobel-laureate physicist with the ear of the President to look forward to. Check out something else he said in the aforementioned article: ". . . industry's strength is that they can make technology scalable . . . moving fast is better than maintaining purity. Monasteries are good places, but they're not good for science."

When it comes to energy, climate change, and the future, we have to get off our collective asses. Larry the Cable Guy says it best: "git-r-done!" I think Dr. Chu might be a git-r-done kind of guy.

Raise a glass . . .

. . . to Repeal Day!

Don't worry, this won't be one of those ponderous diatribes about government and morality and freedom and individual behavior and history and etc.

I'm keeping it simple: raise a glass for Repeal Day. The 21st Amendment was ratified on this date 75 years ago.

Cheers!

Prop. 2 brew

Free Range Red Ale was one of my birthday presents! It is a product of the Laurelwood Public House & Brewery in Portland, Oregon, the city most identified with the craft brew renaissance. These folks are doing the organic thing, which is cool by me. Over at French Street Brewery we are moving in the same direction. The beer had a dark amber color and a big tasty crystal malt flavor. Good stuff.

The growing interest in organic ingredients is good for all of us. I'm not a fool--the use of industrial chemicals to improve yields is one of the major technological achievements of the 20th century. The fact that less than 2% of our population can feed hundreds of millions of people is one of the cornerstones of our civilization. Agricultural science will continue to bring innovations to farming that will benefit all of humankind. The movement to "organics" is not a rejection of modernity--far from it. It is a recognition that dependence on any one technological scheme is a mistake. It is an attempt to unify progress with ecological stewardship. It is a bridge from the past to a future based on sustainability. In a decade, we won't be throwing that outdated and inaccurate word--organic--around because we will view all production through this new lens, that of a sustainable future.

At least I hope so. In the meantime, drink up!