The Boundless Heart

Revolutionary/Evolutionary

2007-03-16T09:52:00.000-05:00

I was in college in 1970. Kent State, Vietnam, Nixon - it all had little effect upon me. I stayed below the radar, even as the campus I attended exploded around me.

At the end of that year, I enetered the Navy, avoiding the draft and the Army. I angled for the Naval Security Group, which mostly worked NOT on ships, and largely in Europe.

So I went into the Navy, and then off to Germany and Scotland. I avoided Vietnam by complying with the system enough to stay below the radar. It was as calculated an effort as the Dems on the Hill are taking now, and it’s roots were the same - deal with what can be done.
Nonetheless, for me it was a personal consequences kind of decision. The risk profile for my choices was much lower than ALL the alternatives I could see.

So I wonder how much of what we sae, what Obey said, is a personal calculation of probable outcomes, or a good-of-the-people kind of calculation.

I can see that we all have legitimate differences about how to approach the good-of-the-people decisions - some of us will do what is possible, others will work to change what is possible. I think we all fear that the choices being made about Iran and Iraq are NOT good-of-the-people choices, but good-for-the-person choices. I am confident that most of us believe Republican, taken as a whole, are making good-for-the-person choices, and we believe that many Democrats are no different. But we desperately want to believe that the Democratic leadership is NOT making those kinds of choices.

I don’t think they are. I do think they are making do with what is possible.

Is it possible for ANYONE already on the hill to change what is possible? That is the question, isn’t it? Do we believe that Reid and Pelosi can change the conversation enough to change the possible? I don’t think they can. What change was possible happened back in Nov. Now we must rely upon the tools of power already in place.

In the end, and on the hill, it is never what is right, only what is possible. It is always politics.

It is a strike against Senator Clinton that she wouldn’t change the conversation even if she could, that her calculations have little appearance of even trying to do the possible.

I am not against calculation - I am opposed to calculation of the personal kind when in public position.

Who among us sacrifice the personal good for the public? Very few I think. We all like our comfort too well.

Voting is good - it’s cheap and satisfies our need (if we feel a need) to participate in the process. It isn’t enough.

But we will never convince the majority of Americans to vote, much less to participate. Personal comfort is very hard to argue against.

We each have our own journey to where we are. My journey leads me to argue for what is possible, but I am aware and appreciative of those who work to change what is possible.

Jake

The Stations of the Cross

2007-03-16T09:48:00.000-05:00

Ok, I’m in Vancouver, BC, it’s late and I’m tired, but God only knows when I’ll get another chance to post this thought - at least while I still remember it.

Sun I went to church (Episcopal) because my oldest granddaughter was doing a mime Stations of the Cross. She is 14 and attends the school associated with this church.

The narrators were also young teens. The choir was great - just listening to them warm up before hand was uplifting - and the kids were wonderful.

The thing is, the story is very moving. The words, as spoken by these young people, are very moving. But I thought, as I listened to the narrators, that Christians have it all wrong. There is no one redemption for all time. Redemptive sacrifices are made every day by inumerable men and women, and their sacrifices are every bit as important as Jesus’.

How strange it is, to recognize that one mortal sacrifice, while ignoring all the other sacrifices made every day in OUR name.

I am no longer a Christian, no longer a believer in a God of any kind, but I believe in sacrifice and the redemptive power of human beings giving it up for the team - the team being you and me, and all of us.

Jake

On Dominance

2007-02-02T15:52:00.000-06:00

I think sex, and all that surrounds it, amplifies our natures with regard to dominance. Sex puts it all on the table, so to speak. There is no element of money, or tomorrow, or children, or work - it's just us without our clothes on. Literally and figuratively.

But sex isn't the be all and end all. It's the relationship that matters. It's about trust and honesty, and giving and receiving. Some of us are good at one and bad at the other. Some of us are good at planning, some not. All that comes into play. Literally and figuratively.

When I look back over my marriage (36 years and counting) I see patterns of dominance and submission in so many things we did well, and things we did not so well at all. For most of that time I lacked the insight to see what emotions and needs were active. Consequently I often responded poorly, even when the clues to the right response were right there to be seen, I just didn't know how to look.

It's not like there is a connection between who we are when we are pursuing external goals and who we are when are addressing our deepest needs. For example, you might think that men would be most likely to be dominant in a D/s relationship, but what I have read is that there are far more submissive men than there are dominant women. These men might have responsible jobs with a great deal of authority and autonomy, but in their heart of hearts, they want someone else to be responsible for things. Sometimes it's role playing, sometimes it's a life style choice.

This engaged interplay of roles requiring trust and honesty - that is what it means to have a good marriage. Interesting, isn't it, that in the dark corners of American life, some people have a firm hold on what it means to BE in a relationship. The fact that their life style is often highly sexualized doesn't diminish the value of their insights.

It's so easy to turn away from insight. We accept what is when what is possible could be so much more satisfying, but we lack the courage, or perhaps the interest, to let go, to reach out and see who we are, and who our partners are.

Jake

Peter Wood on the New Anger in the NRO

2007-01-04T16:24:00.000-06:00

Peter writes in the National Review Online:

The Liberalitarian Dust-Up
The Angry Left rebukes a would-be friend.

I have corresponded with Peter in the past over other opinion pieces, so I couldn't help myself from writing to him again. I need to say that I like Peter, that were we geographically close I like to think we would be friends, but his vision of the world is just slightly askew.

Anyway, here is what I said.

Peter, I think you just stepped in it big time. Chait is not exactly a leading light on the progressive left, and when it comes to pure vituperation,the left doesn't hold a candle to the Right Wing Noise Machine.

It's interesting to me that we keep meeting over these opinion articles of yours. You are entitled to your opinion, and I think a lot of you personally, but on this one, Peter, you're not holding the screwdriver by the handle.

You are right in this much - the progressive left IS angry. But we are also thoughtful, and much less afraid of the hordes of Muslim radicals than we are of Republican radicals. This country is in crisis, Peter, and that crisis has been precipitated by this administration's actions both at home and abroad.

Anger is not an inappropriate response - it just is. What you do with anger is what determines appropriate from inappropriate, and the 2006 elections speak to the actions of the progressive left, which actions were prompted by that anger. This country WILL change course, not because the progressive left was rude, but because it was ACTIVE, and results oriented.

The Left provided much more commodious quarters? Even recognizing that this is an opinion piece, don't you think that statement is a little over the top? Not to mention comparing Howard Dean and Ann Coulter. This Ann "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said. "That's just a joke, for you in the media." Coulter? What has Dean done to deserve such a comparison? I don't think working to attain a majority in both Houses of Congress qualifies, Peter.

The strange twists a mind takes, eh, Peter?

And then there is this from you: "Perhaps this can be added to the many reasons why “liberaltarianism” won’t work. It is an emotional mismatch. Cindy Sheehan just isn’t a good mate for Sherlock Holmes."

In a way, that statement encapsulates all one needs to know about libertarians - you compared a courageous woman, one whose son was lost to Bush's war and one who campaigns tirelessly in an effort to end that war, a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives to no good end, with a made up man from another century, one whose only imperfection was a drug addiction.

The world is real, Peter, as is Cindy Sheehan. Sherlock is make believe, as is "libertarianism". Libertarianism is not a political philosophy, it's kool aid for the Ayn Rand true believers. That's why progressives aren't all that interested in a bastardization of liberal with libertarian. There's enough kool aid in the mix already. It's time for reality to set in.

Jake

Innocence Lost

2006-09-10T07:54:00.000-05:00

In the aftermath of 9/11 I lost something totally unexpected. At nearly 50, I finally lost my innocence.

I once imagined the world as run by adults, men and women more or less like me, except politically ambitious – or more accurately, ambitious, period. Politics – and government - was only one of many things on which I didn’t care to spend time and energy. I figured that adults were mostly parents – and therefore caring, mostly honest, mostly thoughtful, and all flawed. I imagined the difference between one politician and another as not much, and unavoidably so because of the poison of the money it took to get elected.

I was wrong. It’s not that one party, say, Republicans, is inherently bad and the other good. Both major parties could be good, or both bad. But prior to 9/11, I imagined them as both mostly good, with Republicans having the edge. I was comfortable voting Republican.

Clinton and his indiscretions only cemented my preference for Republicans. Oh, I had no illusions that leading Republicans were all faithful husbands to their various wives and faithful stewards of the nation’s well being. But none, so far as I knew, lacked the common sense and restraint to be fellated in the oval office. If Clinton was the best the Democratic party had to offer, then bring on the Republicans. After all, they at least were adults, unlike Clinton, right?

Then came the fiasco of the 2000 elections. I thought the outcome correct, but the process!!! How could it be more screwed up.

And then, 9/11. The towers imploding, Bush flying around the country, the whole surreal event captured live. Bush standing on the rubble, bullhorn in hand. Osama Bin Laden gloating - and the Saudi families being flown out of the country. Theater of the absurd.

I opposed the Afghanistan war. Not because I felt it wrong to go after OBL, but because I couldn’t imagine a war that would cost less and be more effective than just buying the entire place. And treasure is one thing, but blood is another. This nation’s children’s blood, Afghani blood – innocent would suffer right along with the guilty. Then and now, killing MORE innocents will never make up for the lives lost on 9/11.

And Iraq. Iraq was wrong on every level. We hadn’t finished up in Afghanistan, and now we were going to go to war in a country with the flimsiest of evidence of wrong doing? WHY?

There is no why but hubris. Hubris and evil.

And that is the innocence I lost. There is evil in this world, and it isn’t always intentional evil, the evil of Hitler or Stalin. Sometimes it is the evil of incompetence, the evil of hollow pride, the evil of bigotry, the evil of zealotry. That is the lesson I learned, that not all of us are adults, not all of us are caring, and that poisoned or not, it does matter who we elect, who gets to wear the mantle of President of the United States of America.

We get the government we deserve, and we got Bush and Cheney and the Republicans in charge of the House and Senate. We failed ourselves badly.

Too many failures of that magnitude and this country becomes an historical footnote in the Cartoon Book of World History, listed right after the Fall of the Roman Empire.

Until we do something, until we elect counterweights to this Maladministration, we are all Republicans in a time of Dubya, and our hands are stained with the blood of innocents.

Lebanon, crucified by Hezbollah and Israel

2006-07-25T19:41:00.000-05:00

This attack by Israel on Hezbollah is a play by Israel to take out the Hezbollah rockets. ISRAEL escalated this into the debacle it has become in order to "degrade" Hezbollah's ability to damage northern Israel. This is the plan the IDF has had in place for months, awaiting only the cover of a Hezbollah attack - any attack.

Israel decided months ago that civilian deaths in Lebanon were an acceptable price to pay for removing the threat of the rockets.
Except - the rockets keep coming, Hezbollah hasn't given up, and the civilian deaths in Lebanon and Israel keep mounting. Israel erred, and badly. They have lost the support of much of the world, and they have not yet and are not likely to seriously harm Hezbollah, short of genocide. Looked at in that light, you could say that EVERY death, Lebanese or Israli, is a result of Israeli hubris and miscalculation - just as it is a result of Hezbollah hubris and miscalculation.

I think that Israel intended to harm Lebanon, as even they recognize that it is up to the Lebanese to end Hezbollah. So, if that is true, they intended the main effect of their attack to fall on civilians from the very beginning, and claiming to target Hezbollah is no more than a shallow cover for their real end - terrorizing the Lebanese population into ending Hezbollah, and thereby ending the threat to Israel of the Hezbollah rockets. See here Hezbollah Rockets for some discussion on the rockets. There is much more to be found on line, much of it by Israeli sources.

I think it is clear - when the neo-cons play with weapons, people always get hurt. The government in Israel is apparently little different from our own failed administration - prideful, arrogant, and misguided.

Jake

Michael Barone and USN&WR

2006-06-16T13:38:00.000-05:00

Michael Barone.

Go look at Barone's 'thumbs up" blog roll. If he represents USN&WR, without a doubt I will never again subscribe or purchase that magazine. I will not read its website, and the only time I will read USN&WR articles is when they are posted as part of the work of someone I respect, in some forum OTHER than USN&WR.

To quote TBogg quoting Orwell, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

To which I add, Barone is a Pundit.

To argue thus: Vietnam and Watergate were arguably triumphs for honest reporting. But they were also defeats for America--and for millions of freedom-loving people in the world. They ushered in an era when the political opposition and much of the press have sought not just to defeat administrations but to delegitimize them.

If an administration - this one or any other - acts in illegitimate ways, then it IS illegitimate. It is not knowledge of that illegitimacy that is the problem. Barone clearly cannot see that.

What ,then, can he see?

USN&WR should stop publishing Barone. That would indeed be a service to the citizens of this country, and a blow for freedom.

Jake

PS - kudos to TBogg

Linda and the Mommy Brigade

2006-06-14T16:17:00.000-05:00

I read a post by Linda Hirshman on Prospect writing wrt women in the work place. I have read only a small sampling of her work, but I get the sense from that sampling that she feels that women should work because they may provide higher value to society as workers than as stay at home mothers.

My thoughts are, why would anyone do anything for society? Men don't. They work because they must. They must for economic reasons and for personal validation reasons. But I don't think men work for the good of society. Why should women?

Women are an underutilized resource. I am convinced of that. But if a woman can stay home because that is what she wants to do, who is to say she should do something different?

Frankly, if *I* didn't have to work, I wouldn't, and to hell with society. :)

I suspect she gets so much anger from the mommy brigade because her language threatens the societal validation of their choice. Without that validation, they would feel forced into the work force - and time and choice would disappear for most of them, just as it has for most men.

Better would be to argue for flexibility for both men and women, not a single minded devotion to working for the good of society. Hell, she might as well shill for the "selfish gene" if she is going to make society the ultimate good.

The fact is, just as in biological evolution (or at least so I speculate), society is advanced when the collective choices of individuals, acting in their own best interests, aligns with the interests of all. You really can't have one without the other.

Not for long, anyway.

Jake

Ding dong, Zarqawi is dead, the wicked Zarqawi is dead

2006-06-08T12:52:00.000-05:00

Betrayed by close associates and killed by 500 lb bombs. I wonder how it will affect the civil war in Iraq. I hope it signals the beginning of the end.

No doubt the administration will take this as proof positive that we are doing well in Iraq.

Not counting Zarqawi et all, at least 19 people were bombed into an early afterlife today. I'd say that counts as a mixed message.

Well, I AM glad he is dead. I don't take pleasure in his death. I can only imagine that Iraq is a better place without him. Heck, the WORLD is a better place without him.

It's not too much of a stretch to say the Iraq, and the world, would be better places without GWB as well. He doesn't have to be dead, just gone. Gone from the presidency, gone from public life and influence.

Although how much influence he has even now is a good question.

Bill Kristol of hte Weekly Standard says Haditha isn't the evil in Iraq, it's reporting on Haditha that's evil. How twisted is that? And he is supposedly one of the bright ones. I can't speak to his wit, but as for wisdom, I don't see any.

Jake

Things are REALLY bad in Iraq

2006-06-07T12:29:00.000-05:00

I am at a total loss to understand people, friends, who say Iraq is not a debacle. Putting aside Haditha, how can anyone look past the horrific loss of life that is now the norm in Baghdad and many other parts of Iraq and think things are going "ok" in any way? I just don't get it.

I don't get how people who are caring and compassionate in their personal lives somehow do not see how terrible life in Iraq has become. Would they be "ok" with things if it were their children at risk everytime they went to school, or to take a test, or almost anything else? Even staying at home is dangerous.

There is no government in Iraq. There are no liberties or freedoms, except to die, and the Iraqis had that even before we invaded. No one can speak freely, gather peacefully, or petition the government without fearing for their life, often fearing the government itself, or at least specific arms of the government.

Less electricity, less clean water, fewer doctors and engineers - how is Iraq better now than before? Is it enought to say that now the country has a chance at a democracy, even if it is one that appears to embed Sharia in the legal system? Is the chance any greater now than it was under Hussein?

I don't think so. Change would have come to Iraq anyway, sooner or later.

This change is not an improvement.

Jake

So here I am at the end of week 4

2006-06-02T15:18:00.000-05:00

And things are going very well. I have time to think about things, and things to think about. How great is that? :)

I have been given the opportunity to work at the one thing I do well - generate ideas. Now I need to turn opportunity into success. Which can be fun, too.

At least I think it can be fun. I don't exactly have a ton of experience with success. LOL!

Jake

So here I am at day 2

2006-05-09T12:36:00.000-05:00

and things are going ok. Well, even.

I like it here. People have been kind, and excited to welcome me to the team. Kind of nice, for a change.

I could use more change like this. :)

Lots of reading. That gets old, but the amount of reading will go down, at least a little. It's not that I dislike reading, but the material is so boring it's stupefying to read for any length of time.

I knew there was a reason I didn't want to be a lawyer.

Jake

Some thoughts on ending one career and starting another

2006-05-06T10:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was my last day at a job I have worked at, in one way or another, for 24 years. On Monday I start a new job, in a new organization – a very different organization – although I remain an engineer.

As if that describes anything I’ve done for the past 24 years. What I have done, and expect to continue to do, is solve problems. Maybe in this new job it won’t my job to solve ALL the problems, just a subset.

This past week was hard. Tension ratcheted upward with each passing day, peaking yesterday at 4 – when I said goodbye to everyone. A few handshakes, a few hugs, and it’s over. How strange is that.

Parting is such sweet sorrow. Not.
I hate it.
Loosing the ties to close friends makes me ill.

Jake

Some thoughts on Tom Maguire and current issues

2006-05-04T07:49:00.002-05:00

So I’ve been thinking about Tom Maquire. I keep wondering where his sympathies truly lie. Three recent issues – Moussaoui, the admin’s global warming study, and Steele’s OpEd – all seem to be right up his kind of alley, and yet, as of yesterday evening, 5/3/6, he hadn’t posted a word about any of them.

What is up with that? His primary audience is probably in love with Steele, mad that Moussaoui wasn’t executed, and totally taken aback by the study. Yet he keeps talking about Plamegate, or Colbert, or the Duke Lacrosse team. Or even immigration.

Which, of course, his audience can’t get enough of, either.

I wouldn’t care except that Tom has a voice – and damn near a reasonable voice.

In the same way Steele has a voice because his OpEd was published by the WSJ, Tom has a voice in the blogosphere. Of course, there’s no reason he should speak up on every issue that interests me, but I do wonder.

I wonder why the WSJ printed Steele, too. I see it one of two ways – either they were pandering to their base, or they believe in him, and in his words.

I can forgive the pandering thing, even though pandering is a nasty thing to do, but the other, not so much. ‘Cause if it’s the other, and considering who makes up their base, or basement, such belief makes the WSJ a very real part of Eisenhower’s despised military-industrial complex. A tool of that complex, if you will.

A tool of evil, if you will.

Jake

Moussaoui gets life

2006-05-03T17:52:00.000-05:00

And I’m ok with that. ‘Cause if we can execute Moussaoui for wanting to be a suicidal hijacker, then we’d have to execute Shelby Steele “White Guilt and the Western Past” for wanting to be a genocidal maniac.

Not to mention for carrying idiot genes.

Jake

Some more thoughts on global warming (I did talk about this before, right?)

2006-05-03T11:18:00.000-05:00

The NYT published an article reporting on the results of a study commissioned by the Bush admin. The study, excerpted below and located here NYT Article, concludes that global warming is real and that human being are a cause.
___________________

A scientific study commissioned by the Bush administration concluded yesterday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."

The finding eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate over global warming, one that the administration has long cited as a rationale for proceeding cautiously on what it says would be costly limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases.

But White House officials noted that this was just the first of 21 assessments planned by the federal Climate Change Science Program, which was created by the administration in 2002 to address what it called unresolved questions. The officials said that while the new finding was important, the administration's policy remained focused on studying the remaining questions and using voluntary means to slow the growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.

The focus of the new federal study was conflicting records of atmospheric temperature trends.

For more than a decade, scientists using different methods had come up with differing rates of warming at Earth's surface and in the midsection of the atmosphere, called the troposphere. These disparities had been cited by a small group of scientists, and by the administration and its allies, to question a growing consensus among climatologists that warming from heat-trapping gases could dangerously heat Earth.

The new study found that "there is no longer a discrepancy in the rate of global average temperature increase for the surface compared with higher levels in the atmosphere," in the words of a news release issued by the Commerce Department and approved by the White House. The report was published yesterday online at climatescience.gov.

The report's authors all agreed that their review of the data showed that the atmosphere was, in fact, warming in ways that generally meshed with computer simulations. The study said that the only factor that could explain the measured warming of Earth's average temperature over the last 50 years was the buildup heat-trapping gases, which are mainly emitted by burning coal and oil.

...

But Dr. Christy, who teaches at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, said the report also noted that computer simulations of the climate system, while good at replicating the globally averaged temperature changes, still strayed in projecting details, particularly in the tropics.

This implied that the models remained laden with uncertainties when used to study future trends, he said.

Dr. Christy also said that even given what the models projected, it would be impossible to slow warming noticeably in the coming decades. Countries would be wise to seek ways to adapt to warming, he added, even as they seek new sources of energy that do not emit heat-trapping gases.
___________________

I wonder how the right, and particularly the right blogosphere, will now deal with the issue. No GW and DEFINITELY no anthropogenic causes have been articles of faith of the right for years now. I think we get a clue from Christy’s last words in the article – we can’t do anything but learn to cope with climate change.

I don’t know why we’d now listen to the same people who have been so wrong for so long as they try to tell us what to do about global warming.

2 years ago NPR interviewed Christy. This is the short version of the interview, “Christy is a respected climatologist, but he's also a maverick who argues that global warming isn't a problem worth worrying about. His major contribution has been to analyze millions of measurements from weather satellites, looking for a global temperature trend. He's found almost no sign of global warming in the satellite data, and is confident that forecasts of warming up to 10 degrees in the next century are wrong.”

Well, Dr. Christy, why should we listen to you now?

Jake

Some thoughts on reading right wing blogs

2006-05-02T18:30:00.000-05:00

I read a few right wing blogs.

Ok, one, Tom Maguire’s Just One Minute. Tom’s ok, if a bit invested in the current manifestation (or is it infestation?) of the administration. I will cruise through other sites if pointed by a specific reference somewhere, but I surely don’t go there just to read.

But the place I NEVER go anymore are the comment sections of right wing blogs. And not for the obvious – I do comment everywhere I go, and I get bashed regularly. I don’t mind that – not much, anyway. What makes me ill is the unabashed racist warmongering that goes on in the comments. I get a look into the soul of some of my fellow citizens, and it makes me ill.

It’s kill, kill, kill.

Drop the bomb, use the AC 130 gunships, do whatever it takes to kill a billion or two Muslims, and the world will be just fine. When I read the words of people who can say that, even on a blog, I feel like I have slipped out of the real world into some outer ring of hell, or worse, that I have lived in some fantasy land where human beings didn’t wish death to whole populations and am now consigned to the real world, which exists in some outer ring of hell.

Get the picture? It’s an outer ring of hell either way.

I never thought I’d see the day when people who call themselves Americans would advocate genocide. But here we are.

We are Nazis in all but name.

Jake

Some thoughts on archetypes and Harry and Hermione

2006-05-02T11:13:00.000-05:00

So, like there is this whole body of analysis of Harry Potter out there – and from a Jungian Archetype viewpoint, no less.

Imagine that.

I mean, how obvious does it have to be? Harry as hero, Hermione as Anima. Who can’t love that? Not me, that’s for sure.

I think all the stories I like are just like Harry and Hermione, even when the the hero is a woman and the anima is an animus – or another anima. :)

You have to be flexible about these things, you know. We can’t all be stuck in some illusory past where girls were only girls and loved only guys, and the guys were the heroes and the girls great arm candy.

Nope. I’ll take my heroes where I find them. Even when I know they have feet of clay, or come from the wrong gender.

‘Cause, hon, we all got feet of clay, and we all got an inner woman.

Jake

Some thoughts on what makes a good story

2006-05-01T13:45:00.000-05:00

B and I went to the movies the other night (last week). I hoped to find a story with some guts in it, some overarching philosophy and meaning.

No luck.

The best we could find was the bank heist movie with Denzel. It was good, but I realized yet again that good stories, for me, are not only the plot but the why. It doesn't matter if it's a movie, a book, a play, even music.

I read the new Jim Butcher this weekend. A great read. I loved it. And I loved it because you can see the author’s beliefs about the world in the story, and they matter - those beliefs impel the story along. I like that.

A lot.

No, those beliefs shouldn't intrude so much that the story becomes something else - but a story with no guts just isn't much fun.

It may be a Jungian archetype kind of thing. The best stories for us as individuals are about archetypes with which we resonate, the characters placed in opposition to archetypal characters to which we antipathetic. Mysteries, romance, fantasy - you can see the archetypal thing at work in all the major genres, and maybe ALL genres.

In the very act of writing archetypes, we create stories with guts, at least for those readers who have the same archetypal likes and dislikes. You can't read a story about someone with whom you don't resonate. At least you can’t read it and enjoy it.

There are only so many stories. But the telling, now that can be fresh and new a zillion times over.

Jake

Some Thoughts on Global Warming and CO2 Capture and Sequestration

2006-04-23T09:37:00.000-05:00

Despite all the controversy, which in fact and in tenor largely parallels the “controversy” over evolution, global warming is no longer disputed science. In the last few years, climate scientists around the world have reached the conclusion that the major cause of the current warming is anthropogenic – caused by human activities. Greenhouse gases, including CO2, are the most likely agents of climate change.

Coal, because it is largely formed of carbon, when burned in modern power plants is a major source of CO2. Because of evidence that CO2 emissions are a major contributor to global warming, the power supply industry holds a tentative but generally accepted expectation of a legislated reduction in emissions of CO2, even if there is no consensus as to when. A reasonable expectation is that new coal plants brought on line after 2010 will require some form of reduction in CO2 emissions. The only clearly viable option for reducing CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants is capture and sequestration (CCS).

CCS is expected to add 80% to 90% to the total cost of energy from a new coal plant. This comes in four parts – a reduction in plant capacity of approximately 20%, an increase in the construction cost for the CCS plant, an increase in plant heat rate, and the actual costs of the sequestration.

The most likely method of capture is adsorption on amine molecules, and the most likely method of sequestration is in deep earth formations.

If the costs of CCS are as given above, the total cost of energy out of a new coal plant can be expected to increase as much as 50%, which is pretty much pure guesswork at this point. Until facilities are actually built and operated, all costs are guesstimates.

The thing is, Natural Gas costs will continue to increase. $50/MWh now (energy only) will increase to nearly $100 if gas goes from $6 to $12/mmBtu (likely more) giving total costs in excess of $130/MWh – probably more than new coal with CCS. New coal costs are about $1800/kW and already include SO2, NOX and Hg capture. It will take another $500/kW or so to add CCS.

Finally, adding CO2 capture and sequestration (CCS) to new coal plants is estimated to approximately double the total cost of electricity produced. That is not as terrible as it sounds - doubling means going from 4 cents/kWh to 8 cents. Or maybe 5 cents to 10 cents. The point is, the fuel component alone of electricity fueled by natural gas costs about that much now. The average cost of electricity today is already 5 or 6 cents/kWh. If we replaced the entire existing fleet of coal plants with new plant incorporating CCS would increase costs maybe a third to a half.

IOW, it is very doable.

And, IMO, very likely.

I don't know how long it will take, however, or when it will truly be undertaken as a national priority. Retrofitting is about $500/kW, about the same as the CCS addition to new plant. The real problem is s serious reduction in available capacity with CCS. You lose approximately 1/3 of total capacity to the CCS effort.

Beyond that, there are almost no coal plants built after 1987. The NEWEST coal plants in the fleet are now 20 years old, and most are far older. It is time to build new plant, with or without an oil or NG crisis.

Were we to get started NOW, significant progress could be made in less than a decade.

Jake

Some thoughts on belief and faith, part 2

2006-04-17T18:48:00.000-05:00

I listened to NPR All Things Considered Commentator, Laurel Snyder, talking about her Jewish and Christian family. She comes from an interfaith marriage, and through a deal struck when her parents married, was raised Jewish. Her marriage is also interfaith. Her comments concerned the blending of the two traditions, and specifically the Passover Seder and Easter.

She said, “I feel upset by interfaith seders, by the attempted blending of faiths; maybe because I am the product of such blending.” And “If I don’t believe something, I might just end up a watered down version of nothing.” Finally, she says “When you blend mysteries of two faiths, what’s left of either?”

So what is left when you blend the traditions of two faiths? Is it true that if you don’t believe something, you might just end up a watered down version of nothing?

I don’t know about traditions. I think that trying to maintain the immediacy and efficacy of a tradition means that you don’t fool with it. However, adding traditions, such as a Christian Passover Seder, yes, I think that is cool.

I do know this - not believing in “something” is not the same as believing in nothing. Faith does not really need an object – a god, or even a pantheon of gods. What WE need is belief that life matters. We all find that where we can.

I’m not completely sure that faith requires even so much as belief that OUR life matters.

Jake

Some thoughts on belief and faith

2006-04-13T15:49:00.000-05:00

I have been reading Alan Watts “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, wherein one of the things he talks of is the difference between belief and faith.

The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines the two words this way:

Belief - a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing

Faith - firm belief in something for which there is no proof

They are strangely (to me) similar in the dictionary, yet Watts and I would make this distinction: belief is the insistence that the truth is what one would “leif” or wish it to be, while faith is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.

The distinction is this, that with respect to the questions that matter, belief defines what that answer must be, while faith requires only that there BE an answer and that the answer be true.

This difference between belief and faith is important because in these polarized times, it is belief that is in ascendance, while faith gets short shrift. We all view the world not as it is, however hard that may be, but through the lens of how we want it to be. We have lots of beliefs and little faith.

The proof is simple, and it is found in one very common thing – how much time we spend discussing, arguing, the bits and pieces of ongoing events, such as the Libby trial, putting a spotlight on our beliefs in post after post, knowing all the while that there will be an answer (probably) and that one side will be bitterly disappointed and one side will rejoice.

Why all the angst? If we are uncovering the truth for all to see, should that not be our article of faith? That whatever the outcome, the truth was discovered, faith realized?

Any time we argue for an end in which we have no part, we prove yet again that belief is not quite the foundation of stone we wish it were. Belief is little more than the shifting sands of our current desires.

Believe what you will. The truth will out.

Eventually. :)

Jake

Some thoughts on Changing Your Mind about Iraq

2006-04-11T13:50:00.000-05:00

The LA Times recently hosted Francis Fukuyama, writing about changing his mind.

Francis Fukuyama on changing his mind

I tried to extract the most important points of the article using Francis’ words, but he proved too concise - to further shrink his words would leave me subject to the “quotes out of context” claim. So, here is part of what he said, but you really need to read the whole article:

SEVEN WEEKS AGO, I published my case against the Iraq war. I wrote that although I had originally advocated military intervention in Iraq, and had even signed a letter to that effect shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I had since changed my mind.

But apparently this kind of honest acknowledgment is verboten. In the weeks since my book came out, I've been challenged, attacked and vilified from both ends of the ideological spectrum. From the right, columnist Charles Krauthammer has accused me of being an opportunistic traitor to the neoconservative cause — and a coward to boot. From the left, I've been told that I have "blood on my hands" for having initially favored toppling Saddam Hussein and that my "apology" won't be accepted.

…

In my view, no one should be required to apologize for having supported intervention in Iraq before the war. There were important competing moral goods on both sides of the argument, something that many on the left still refuse to recognize. … The debate over the war shouldn't have been whether it was morally right to topple Hussein (which it clearly was), but whether it was prudent to do so given the possible costs and potential consequences of intervention and whether it was legitimate for the U.S. to invade in the unilateral way that it did.

…

But in the years since then, it is the right that has failed to come to terms with these uncomfortable facts. The failure to find WMD and to make a quick transition to a stable democracy — as well as the prisoner abuse and the inevitable bad press that emerges from any prolonged occupation — have done enormous damage to America's credibility and standing in the world….

…

The logic of my prewar shift on invading Iraq has now been doubly confirmed. I believe that the neoconservative movement, with which I was associated, has become indelibly associated with a failed policy, and that unilateralism and coercive regime change cannot be the basis for an effective American foreign policy. …

What has infuriated many people is President Bush's unwillingness to admit that he made any mistakes whatsoever in the whole Iraq adventure….

… Instead of trying to defend sharply polarized positions taken more than three years ago, it would be far better if people could actually take aboard new information and think about how their earlier commitments, honestly undertaken, actually jibe with reality — even if this does on occasion require changing your mind.

Francis speaks from a unique viewpoint – or at least it once was unique. There seem to be more and more post 9/11 pro-war voices who are now rethinking the whole Iraq invasion and occupation thing. Many of them do not claim, as Francis does, that the war was a bad idea, that “democratizing Iraq and the Mideast might come to look like empire”, but rather, as Bill Buckley says. “It didn’t work”. Bill’s final words on the subject are “… within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.” Not that Bill thinks the goal was wrong, or even the tactics, just that we couldn’t, or wouldn’t, apply appropriate measures to accomplish our goal. Measures such as we used on Hiroshima and Dresden. Or perhaps he meant instituting the draft; he really isn’t very clear on the subject.

The trouble the left has (is there a “left” anymore? I think of the left as everything different from the right) is that Francis and Bill say the cause is lost but don’t admit that it was a MILITARY invasion that failed. They don’t renounce war as a tool of regime change. Bill explicitly reserves the right to invade another country in an attempt to plant democracy (he calls it maintaining American idealism - the same idealism that invaded Iraq in the first place), while Francis is more circumspect – he says only that we should have had the full support of the UN, that “… no one should be required to apologize for having supported intervention in Iraq before the war.” Which the Bill thing is funny, if you think about it. The last two regime changes we attempted, Afghanistan and Iraq, ended up instituting Sharia as the law of the land – and Bill thinks we need to go back and talk to the Afghani’s more, so that they understand that when AMERICA brings you democracy, you better by Gawd have a special place in your heart for Christians. Even if they are apostate Muslims.

Mind you, I have no problems with apostasy.

Francis doesn’t get it, Bill doesn’t get it, none of them get it. Ok, Francis does come close – he says “unilateralism and coercive regime change cannot be the basis for an effective American foreign policy.” Does that mean he now believes that invasion and occupation are not the best method for planting democracy?

I don’t know what he believes, but that is what I believe, and believed back then.

Changing your mind when the facts don’t support your beliefs is a good thing. I think there are a lot of us who might give it a try.

Some thoughts on appeasement

2006-04-09T19:28:00.000-05:00

I stand accused of appeasement – and I have no clue why. I must have written something that suggests I am for appeasement, but if I did, I do not recall those words, nor can I find them.

Perhaps because I am anti-war, and particularly opposed to the Iraq war and nuking Iran, then I must, by extension, be for appeasement. What is this appeasement thing, anyway? Are there but two alternatives, war or appeasement? Are sanctions, being not-war, appeasement? Is the only way to deal with madmen such as Ahmadinejad to nuke them?

If there are other alternatives to war that are not appeasement, was the Iraq war necessary, or could it be best described as Churchill described WWII, as an unnecessary war? It is true that I think of the Iraq war as an unnecessary war.

Here's a Churchill quote on appeasement: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last."

It seems to me I can't accurately be described as an appeaser, as the loudest criticism of my position is that, because I believe the Iraq war is a mistake and don’t want to nuke Iran, I don’t care about the safety of the citizens of this country. It is true that I consider some risk of terrorism on American soil as unavoidable. I also think the Iraq war has not reduced that risk one iota.

Perhaps appeasement comes in many guises. Perhaps appeasement is just one of many acts of willful blindness to the actual risks that will result from whatever choices are made. Chamberlain, for example, was willfully blind to the likely outcome of the Munich Agreement.

In the same vein, I think pro-war voices in this country are willfully blind to the likely outcome of their choices - more risk of terrorism here in the US, and everywhere else, not less.

If there is willful blindness in this country, it is in feeding the crocodile of war the children of other nations, hoping against hope that it will not eat ours.

Or at least not more than a few thousand here and there.

Jake