abilard

His slit yellow eyes are staring at me.  My wife's cat...  So long I trusted that he was harmless, but after listening to Alex Jones and Gerald Celente I KNOW BETTER!!!

You, you have not been privileged to hear what I have heard from THE ONLY ONES SMART ENOUGH TO SEE IT.  But I know.  I know the world ended yesterday, and it was OBAMA'S FAULT.

And the cat, that cricket chasing Commie, is an agent of the statist pigs and their black UN helicopters.  All day he watches and eats my food.  Does he work?  Noooo.  He feels entitled.

But he won't get me!  When everyone realizes the world has ended I'll be there laughing in my bunker!  And then that cat will know he was on the wrong side.  Oh yeah.  Let's see him get his free kitty chow then!

What?  What was that Renee?  Even if the world ends I have to feed his ass anyway???

...

GODDAMMIT!!!

PS - If you would like to get some self-sufficiency info from someone who is not totally #@!%%$^ in the head, try The Survival Podcast.  While I do not share the religious convictions of the host (Jack Spirko) or agree with several of his political opinions, he imparts a lot of practical information on permaculture and other sustainable technologies.

Unemployment is climbing and, judging from the BLS, 16.8% of Americans are experiencing economic catastrophe.  I think, given the government's affinity for adjusting numbers, that we can safely say that 1 of every 5 Americans is in desperate circumstances.  So, has the stimulus failed?  Was Keynes wrong?

The stimulus has been setup in such a way as to give the government, and Keynes, cover from this sort of criticism.  First, the program only promises to create a limited number of jobs over a two year time period.  Second, the government has just started disbursing funds, and most of the funds have yet to go out.  Third, it takes time for the effects of an increase in activity in a given economic sector to work its way through to the rest of the economy.

So, it is too early to say.  However, the two year pass that the government wants on evaluating this program is bogus, as is their attempt to protect themselves by defining success as creating a negligible amount of jobs which, in a population of our size, could be masked by some random fluctuation.  Keynes asserted and they promised that bleeding ourselves dry with government spending would fix the economy.

This means no crying about the complexities of the system, or the imperfection of the implementation as a consequence of politics.  Keynesianism prescribes government intervention for economic problems and as such is a political approach.  If I propose to use a sledge hammer to pound a nail, I have no right to blame the hardness of the steel of the hammer head when the table gets dented.

Either this country will be out of recession before the new year, or this experiment will have failed.

Ohio, like California, has a budget crisis.  The governor's proposed budget apparently involves cutting libraries, child protective services, and pre-school along with state-sponsored gambling.  Gambling preys upon the desperate, and those without the mathematical intelligence to understand odds, so it is natural that the politicians of Ohio should wish to use it to maximize revenue.  The cuts likewise target the weak and desperate.

Neither the Democrats, led by Governor Ted Strickland, nor the Republicans, led by Senate President Bill Harris, have any ethical issues with this sort of predation, even though the voters of Ohio have rejected gambling as a source of revenue directly on four occasions.  It is just a question of who will take the blame, and, for the first time in about two decades, the government of Ohio has had to pass an interim budget to allow time for political maneuvering.  They seem oblivious to the fact that governing in such a self-interested manner betrays an extreme lack of integrity.

The problem with electing individuals who legislate in this way is not just one of ethics, however.  Lack of ethics in government has practical consequences.  It results in legislation that does not make any sense, but merely preys upon the weak.  Cutting child protective services along with pre-school, for example, equates the first, protecting the lives of the children in question, with the second, a charity designed to pay for something that parents should pay for themselves.  The first is a core responsibility of government.  The second can and should be handled by families and communities.

Ethics have practical consequences.  An ethical approach to government would be to prioritize those programs that fall within the core mandate of government (protecting life, liberty, etc.), cutting those that do not and raising taxes to pay for those that do.  Rather than having such a debate and shouldering those responsibilities, we will be forced instead to labor under the consequences of a mishmash of political expediency and party politics.

Shame on Ohio's politicians, if they are capable of feeling it.

[apologies to the real poets out there]

The Democrats and Republicans are wedded to some blatant fictions.  Some they share and some they do not.  Republicans embrace the notion that torture by the state in secret prisons without any hint of due process can in any way be reconciled with The United States Constitution.  The Democratic Party for its part, through legislation and justices and college professors, has long supported the notion that racism isn't racism if it is directed at "white" people.

Both notions are blockheaded prattle.  One of these notions has just been dealt a blow by Shrub's minions on the Supreme Court:

Supreme Court Overturns Sotomayor in Ricci vs. DeStephano (PDF - 489 KB)

I think this is healthy.  Too often in Washington the two parties have been willing to support each other's lies, or at least give them some credence.  Now they hate each other enough that the lies are getting called out.

Calling out the President's nominee, and their own potential future colleague, in this case is... discourteous in a way that the august body generally avoids.  But, she deserved it, unlike many of the things in life that she has been given, like her valedictory speech.  Sotomayor's absence of an opinion on the Ricci case makes me wonder what, if any, defense she could have made for such blatant discrimination.  Did she have any, or was she, as a beneficiary of affirmative action, merely hoping to sweep some of its victims under the rug to preserve a system that had served her own interests so well?

My hope is that Democrats will return the favor and start dealing with Republican fictions in less gentlemanly fashion.  Perhaps, once the facile poppycock has been stripped away, we will be in a position to have honest debates on issues.  I doubt they have the courage to carry this political war quite that far.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My subliminal mind was quite active last night, summing up experiences from the past year.  I dreamt that I was in Phoenix once again, going about my routine.  Then I and my family started walking.

Eventually we reached a point where the land got higher and greener.  We pushed on into the uplands until the roads ran out.  Wandering the fields, heading the opposite direction, were Amish quoting Bible verses.  They shouted at us to repent, but we walked on.

Behind them was a mountain with a cave at its base.  We entered and saw an escalator going all the way to the summit.  At the top was a window and beyond it a golden valley.

My family went up first.  As I moved to follow an Amish woman grabbed my arm and shouted "I believe in God.  What do you believe in?"

I pointed toward my family entering the golden valley and said "I believe in that."

I then followed them up the escalator.  At the top, waiting for me, was my Grandma Spencer, who passed away last autumn.  She stopped me, grilling me about my marriage and family.  I explained that Renee and I divide things up according to what we are good at, and that some of the answers she wanted would have to come from Renee.  I then answered for my part.  This satisfied her.  I entered the valley, and the dream ended.

Confession: while fond of vampire horror, I could not find the motivation to see Twilight.  It struck me as cheesy in all the wrong ways.  Judging from this remix from Jonathan McIntosh, I was right:

RebelliousPixels.com - Buffy vs Edward (Twilight Remixed)

Which reaction is more appropriate?  Bella Swan's in Twilight, or Buffy's?  Angel, while superficially a cliche, is nowhere near as offensive as Cullen and is eventually given some depth by Whedon.  Twilight?  Other than teen angst and uninteresting sexual tension, does it have any depth?

Persistent myths surround innovation, dating at least from the Greeks whose stories asserted that it came from the Muses, a mystical gift granted to a few heroes or tribes.  "Work?  People who work are imitators or drones.  The spark of the divine frees one from the need for work."  As Edison would confirm, this is a lie.

The lie protects egos and justifies discrimination.  When Japanese engineers began to excel, many Americans sought consolation in the notion that those engineers were copycats.  Of course they were.  They were also geniuses.  When India rose, management in our tech firms complained that their new-found cheap labor could not innovate because they wisely refused to budge from the letter of their contracts and, as overseas contractors, were not as easy to abuse as domestic workers.  This lie, confusing willingness with ability, was also in the service of its speakers.

Like some Japanese in the 80s, Indians are now falling prey to the same vanities:

Information Week - Down To Business: When National IT Pride Devolves Into Stereotypes

The most foolish thing about such statements is their tribal nature.  Genius is individual in nature and arises through a process whose core is work.  Whether the individual is Michelangelo studying the approaches of the ancient Greeks, or Einstein immersing himself in Newton before bettering him, the process is the same:

1. Master the Basics - This involves a lot of rote work, practicing the forms until the the practitioner can render them with little thought.
2. Imitate the Best - Replicate works of genius to the best of one's ability to understand how those works were constructed and to gain insight into the minds that created them.
3. Innovate - Apply what has been learned, making subtle and gradual modifications to meet new needs or serve new purposes.

All individuals begin at the same starting point.  Some will work, imitate, and, eventually, innovate.  Others will take refuge from work in fanciful notions that their tribe is uniquely gifted and genius will come.  While they do, some other individual will be marching toward success.

While taking baby steps toward sustainability I have now consumed a fair amount of your online literature and other media, as well as some books.  This has resulted in a couple pages of notes covering useful knowledge of various technologies and techniques, some of which I already have applied to my financial benefit.  I appreciate this.  However, this knowledge is usually imparted with significant political baggage and I have a few observations.

Bragging about one's education while employing invented pronunciations and non-standard grammar does not enhance one's status.  All of us occasionally make such mistakes, but frequency is telling.  The educations people tend to respect are formal educations, and it is apparent that most of you are self-educated or possess degrees that amount to technical training.  I have a great respect for autodidacts, but also a commensurate disrespect for those who pretend to statuses they have not earned.

As someone who spent a dozen years in college studying non-technical disciplines, one advantage I have is that I have been exposed to perspectives with which I disagree, in depth.  My suspicion is that, as autodidacts, you have limited your exposure to counter views to a significant degree or have only confronted these other perspectives as straw men.  I make this generalization based on the factual errors and distortions I have encountered during my research, and on the oversimplifications of complex issues which form the basis for many strongly-held opinions in your community.

If TEOTWAWKI is upon us, among the most important tools one can possess are critical thinking skills.  Survival could depend on it.  I suggest you pause, allow room for moderation in your views, and consider that there are more possibilities in this universe than any one of us can imagine.  Whatever the future holds, if humanity is to survive, it will include people with whom you disagree, currently have contempt for, and who, nonetheless, will adapt and survive right along with you.  Therefore, you might want to leave a little room in your philosophies for cooperating with them.

Last May in Arizona we used 2570 kilowatt hours (KWH) worth of electricity which resulted in a bill for $284.90.  This May in Ohio we used 553 KWH in a smaller residence, with no servers running inside and lower air conditioning costs.  The charges for this came to $63.01.  At my apartment in West Virginia I used an additional 263 KWH for $23.56.  So, we have reduced usage by two thirds at a savings for the month of $196.86.

Of course, utility bills are higher in Arizona during the hot months.  If our hottest month from last year (July, judging from the power bill) is compared with the coldest month from this year (January, averaging 24 degrees), we still come out ahead.  Electricity and gas for two residences here cost us a total of $295.33 this past January.  The house in Arizona, with its servers, used up 3490 KWH last July, costing us $415.62, or $120.29 more.

Hopefully, a year from now with better insulation and energy star appliances, those numbers will look even better.

Coal ash, deeper than ten-story buildings are tall, fills valleys capped by soil in which only grasses will grow.  Mountaintops and hills, flattened by explosives, give way at cliff's edge to pits with water of murky greens, blues, and other hues, where no fish can be seen.  Shafts open in the forest floor, plunging 30 feet into the earth to where blasting has sealed them, thus blocking access to the miles of slurry-filled mines below.  All within ten miles of my home.  All the creation of an ancient system whose modern expression is the coal industry.

For centuries they held my ancestors in servitude by paying in company scrip.  My forebears rebelled in Wales and fled here, founding Minersville, Ohio, but the system followed them.  Generations more of my family would labor under it, hollowing out gloomy caverns beneath the very hillside we now own, until they joined the United Mine Workers (UMW) and, for a while, seemed to break the system's back.

One of the battles of the UMW, fought on Blair Mountain in 1921, would bring more than 10,000 armed miners into conflict with coal industry management and the US Army.  It is a battle our history books have long ignored, while coal lit our homes, forged our steel, and built our nation.  Now, after a decade of effort, the battle has rightly been listed in the National Registry of Historic Places, though some seek to remove it and blast the site and its memory to dust:

NPR - Blair Mountain letters show coordinated opposition campaign

Who will win?  Politicians do not resist King Coal for long.  When the King says jump, WV Governor Manchin asks how high.  He even named coal West Virginia's official state rock.  Like his predecessor, Governor Arch A. Moore, who let the coal industry off lightly after a flood of slurry washed away 125 men, women, and children, Manchin has his priorities, as does Obama:

LA Times - Is Obama caving in to coal?

I want to root for coal.  The coal industry is one of America's greatest strengths and a technological marvel.  I want to despise the activists who come here spouting platitudes and wishful thinking without understanding or respecting the region.  I want to champion the right of industrialists to dream, think, build, and prosper, disposing of their property as they see fit in the process.

Then I see the how politicians move as though puppets on strings, and how the industry impacts the region, at best bad neighbors, at worst... see above.  In seeking their profit they lay waste to places and people over whom they have no right.  Our nation needs a Danagger Coal.  It does not need a Coal Mafia.

A period in history is like a painting on glass, shattered by time into thousands of pieces and swept over by wind and water until only mismatched fragments remain.  Historians gaze at these fragments, selecting those shards that catch the eye either through scope or vividness, and arranging them into smaller representations of what was.  History, in practice, is art.  Histories reflect not only the fragments of the past they are assembled from, but simultaneously the historian who selects those fragments and arranges them for presentation.

The pages of The Roman Way reflect the work of a woman who painstakingly sifted the fragments of history for only the most vivid pieces.  Having read many books on Rome I felt at first surprised.  Where was the strength and discipline that conquered the Mediterranean?  The author, Edith Hamilton, focused instead on sexual relationships between Romans, on their emotional lives, and on the way they hid emotion from public persona.

So many familiar fragments had been left out in the effort to focus the reader's gaze in this particular way that I became curious about the author.  She was a 19th century heiress and a genius whose intelligence had been honed by one of the best educations money could buy.  By 1887 the family fortune was running low so she secured an appointment as headmistress of Bryn Mawr Preparatory School in Baltimore.  She held this appointment for 25 years until being removed for having relations with a student, Miss Doris Fielding Reid.  Edith and Doris then bought a house, moved in together, adopted Doris's nephew, and lived as two married women for the next 40 years while Edith wrote books (including some on Christianity).  Now I understood Edith's art.

And the value of her art?  Those looking for standard representations of Romans should find other tomes to peruse.  Those looking for a presentation that seems fresh even though written in 1932 should enjoy this book.  Her source materials are sound and her perspective is worth considering if only for highlighting in one's mind the nature of the art that is history and how open to interpretation its bare fragments happen to be.

Around 1982, during the recession of the first Reagan term, I went with my parents to Gallipolis.  My Dad had been laid off.  He had become unpopular in the Carpenter's Union.  Others in the union had complained that contracts were finished too quickly when he was on the crew (meaning less money for them) and so they were unwilling to work with him.  Only under-the-table work was available locally outside of union postings.  This had brought us to the unemployment office.

I could practically smell the fear on my parents that day and remember the high pitched quaver in their voices as they discussed what to do.  One man, an outsider to the region, had offered my father a job.  He did not give a fig for the union and had seen Dad work, but taking the job would have meant moving to Florida.  The King family had lived continuously in the same county since clearing the land that would be their farm in the early 19^th century.  Dad turned the man down because he did not want to leave land that he loved.  My mother was not amused by this.

That day there were no answers, and for Dad there would be none ever.  He briefly worked in a coal mine after that.  This lasted for a few months, until a cave-in at his station cured him of a desire to go underground.  Then he descended into alcoholism.

In May the jobless rate rose to 9.4%, the same level it was at during the recession that destroyed my father.  In Gallipolis and other places families are experiencing what we did back then in similar numbers.  These numbers are large enough that an economic recovery is unlikely to be able to reabsorb these workers along with the young workers added yearly by population growth.  Like my father, many of those in line now for benefits have probably seen their last days of gainful employment.

This is what 9.4% means.

The President was quite flattering to Islam today:

BBC - Obama's Speech: An Analysis

What pleasant fictions!  Nevermind that the core of Muslim Civilization had almost nothing to do with seeding our Renaissance.  That was Al-Andalus, a rather strange outlier on its western fringe, and Byzantium, which was Greek Orthodox and not Muslim.  Let's ignore that Islam's great scholars, like Ibn Rushd, achieved what they did in spite of religion, or that, like Galileo, often found themselves persecuted by the religious extremists of their day.  Let's ignore that Muslim Civilization acted primarily as transmitters of Greco-Roman knowledge, with significant advancements in only two subjects, Algebra and Navigation, to show for a thousand years of dominance.

No, as balm to the ego, let's credit Islam with flashes of human brilliance that were the work of others, like the arch, even though Hadrian used the technology to rebuild the Pantheon in 126 AD a good 444 years before The Prophet was even born.  Architectural advancements, long credited to Islam, were in fact taken by Muslim conquerors from the Byzantines, from dome in the Dome of the Rock, to the decorative tiles on Islam's temples and minarets.

And let's pretend that Americans are just like Muslims, people of The Book even if a little strange:

Actually, Mr. President, not all of us have an imaginary friend named God that we aspire to love, and if you read President Adams a little further in that treaty you quoted you would see that our founders did not regard the United States as a religious state in any way, shape, or form; a fact which your words belie.

So let's, as you say, face the sources of the tension squarely, one of which is that Islam has, since its inception and by its original creed, embraced the killing of unbelievers and the oppression of minorities.  Let's not patronize Muslims by pretending otherwise in the hope that they will embrace more moderate interpretations of "holy" injunctions to commit murder.  Just as they call on us to openly acknowledge our crimes, so they should stare unblinking at theirs.

1. object - Our new (to us) farm truck, full-sized bed dripping with moss and loam from the weekend's work.
2. reaction - I'm greeted warmly by the toll booth operator in West Virginia, who stops just short of small talk in bidding me to have a good day.

1. object - My scion.
2. reaction - Suspicious stare from the toll booth operator, the barest of grunts as communication.

1. object - My jeans, clean, but stained from farm work.
2. reaction - A woman in Starbucks pulls her purse close as I walk by, her friends laugh at the rudeness of the action which I ignore, and she explains it contains several valuables.

1. object - My MacBook Pro.
2. reaction - The same woman gapes slightly, ogling at it and then looks away confused.

I exist in an incongruity of objects, the integrity of my person drowned in a discord of imposed messages.  Prejudices are too simple a lens, as I am more than the semblance of symbols.  As a reflector, though, prejudice is ideal.

This weekend Renee and I went to a science fiction convention called Marcon at the Hyatt Regency in Columbus, Ohio.  Marcon is analogous to CopperCon in Phoenix, Arizona, which is to say that it is the state's largest literature-oriented science fiction convention (as opposed to art, media, or gaming).  Unlike CopperCon, however, it has a couple thousand attendees.  Given that Ohio's population is only 1.77 times that of Arizona, this suggests that Ohio, proportionately, has a lot more geeks.

The Hyatt is a steel and glass construction 20 stories tall.  Our room in the convention block turned out to be on the 19^th floor and at night the lights of high rises in the city glittered around us.  We ordered room service since we arrived just before midnight.  While the food was passable, when I spend $111 on some steaks I want to experience cooking better than my own.

I let Renee lead the way on Saturday and, instead of going to panels as I would have chosen, we ended up in the dealer's room and bidding in the art auction.  Alexandra, once she is born, will now have several nice prints from Alan F. Beck's 'The Adventures of Nogard and Jackpot' series to go around her crib.  Sage and Hunter scored a couple of Link costumes to wander around the con in.  I ended up with a Cthulu Plushy.

Renee then got a henna tattoo and listened while a Babylonian Numerologist chatted in pleasant vagaries.  At one point I spied David Lawrence, who plays Eric Doyle on Heroes, sitting at a table with fans milling about so I said hi.  Renee and I ended the night at a Stargate panel where Renee outgeeked me by spouting minutia from the show.  Really, Goa'uld, Ori, whatever...  It's not as good as the new Star Trek movie.

Hopefully we can go again next year as it was a lot of fun.

Hinton, WV (where I work) has an arsonist:

Hinton Church Burns Down Friday - What is happening in Hinton?

Decades of poverty have left the town with a third of its former population.  Most of its buildings are empty and decrepit, targets for the perpetrator or perpetrators.  At the moment, the town seems powerless to respond.  Is it apathy?  Lack of imagination?  Lack of will?

Who will rebuild?  The wealth, skills, and gumption that erected the buildings in the first place vanished almost a century ago.  Like late Romans, the people of Hinton watch as villas burn to ash and wonder at the violence of the Vandals, praying to a non-existent god to save them.

During the recent electrical outages local people generated their own power and helped each other.  Locals, likewise, were the first to respond when the floods came a few weeks ago.  They will now need to rise again, relearn the industries of their ancestors, and rebuild.  Hinton must save itself or perish.

Libertarians have long argued that government spending destroys the economy because it destroys the work ethic: productive workers are taxed to support unproductive ones, which results in the productive ones ceasing to be productive.  Even a casual glance at human history shows that when taxes are used for roads, courts, and civil defense productivity increases.  In other words, reality is more complex than the anarcho-capitalist Libertarian model describes with the consequence that anarcho-capitalist societies, if they existed, are now extinct.

Another extreme, the nanny state, appears less immediately deadly than anarcho-capitalism, but it has its problems nonetheless, as California is demonstrating:

The Atlantic Monthly - Is California Too Big to Fail?

Like Megan McArdle, I think California should be allowed to go into bankruptcy.  However, I also think that this is an opportunity to examine which forms of government spending work and which do not.  I suspect that there are important lessons to be learned about letting ideology trump rationality in legislation, but rigorous study of the particulars of California's laws and their outcomes would be required.

Even without such study it is telling that California, which chided the rest of the union about caring for the least able, has now become, through social spending, what they sought to cure.

As I age my brain seems to stiffen in the way supple saplings turn to wood.  Memories are rings, concentric circles whose layers of information are triggered by random scents or encounters.  In a layer one can explore, wandering across the many subjects of that ring, the new layers thick with information.  Deeper data, even closely related, is harder to get to, and the rings are smaller there as time brings loss of facts once close to the surface.

Language lets me measure these changes.  When young, language flowed hotly in my mind, new words lifted whole from the pages of quickly read books.  At twenty I would dream in many languages, Russian, French, and English all blending, partially remembered, but remembered, from my waking life.  After thirty my mind would slip from programming language to programming language, crossing rings without notice.

Tonight, at less than a year from forty, change is apparent: a programming language used only last summer comes slowly, thickly, with effort.  It seems to be the way of things now.  I am, unacceptably but unavoidably, slowing.  It is a change I want to reverse.