Christopher McKitterick

God, this is beautiful. (And ugly. And heart-rending.)

I don't often have such a strong reaction to an essay. We read essays like this because they're emotionally true; we read this kind of writing and poetry and fiction, we listen to music that does this for us and watch movies that touch on truths we know inside because what the words express is so true for us. It's as if finally - at last! - someone understands well enough to speak for us honestly and with perfect clarity. It's as if our minds touch just for a moment. Being understood and hearing our inner truths expressed so well is cathartic. We are never the same again after veils of misunderstanding are pulled aside; when we look inside without filters or walls, we become someone different; after facing the truth about ourselves, ironically we are never the same.

This essay describes concisely and lucidly how it felt to grow up Gen X American. And this phrase nails exactly about how it felt to hear Obama accept the Presidency:

when we watched Barack Obama's victory speech on Tuesday night, we looked into the eyes of a real leader, and decades of cynicism about politics and grass-roots movements and community melted away in a single moment.

For my entire life, I've had to knuckle under to conservatives (yes, I count Bill Clinton as such); for the students I teach, it must have been so much worse to have mostly only known the fucking tragedy that was the Bush dynasty. Though I have vague memories of Jimmy Carter, I've never felt someone represented me in the White House. Seeing Obama accepting the Presidency... I just wept for joy. And now I'm wet-cheeked all over again. Here, read it:

( Essay text archived behind the cut. )

Fucking brilliant.

With hope,
Chris

PS: I've deleted five LJ icons re: Bush and cynicism. It's time.

This could be huge, folks:

A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth.

Also, this :

Because the fungus can manufacture what we would normally think of as components of crude oil, it casts some doubt on the idea that crude oil is a fossil fuel.

"It may be the case that organisms like this produced some — maybe not all — but some of the world's crude," Strobel said.

So we can actually eat our corn rather than make it into fuel, then toss the sticks and leaves into our vats of fuel-making fungus.

In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves, "Whoah."

Chris

I'm not talking about those nasty Mercurians, bent on domination of the entire Solar System. No, this is a more insidious threat: Jupiter, King of the Planets, is yanking Mercury this way and that, altering its orbit such that it will one day either fall into the Sun, be ejected from the Solar System entirely, crash into Venus, or - and here's where we should really care - plummet into our little blue world.


Click the image to learn more about this story's Red Shirt character.

That's right. Jupiter's gravitational influence will one day tear apart the inner Solar System. Nice. And to think it used to be my favorite planet. Thanks a lot, Jupiter. Dude.


Click the image to learn more about this story's antagonist.

Chris

Here's how to make ethanol in an environmentally sensible and renewable way that doesn't compete with food (which drives up prices while harming poor countries): Use biological waste materials! The cool thing is that this company is a partner with GM, which plans to put a huge number of "Flex-Fuel" vehicles on the road.

Our energy future is looking less dire.

Best,
Chris

In the post I made last month about why we should quit the Iraq war right away, one reason I cited was the cost: $3 trillion. This got me thinking: What else could the US do for $3 trillion? Here are a few ideas:

Put Humans in Space - Permanently

NASA's current budget is about $5.4 billion (or $16 billion; sources vary). That's about 1/500^th to 1/1000^th of the cost of the Iraq war. Hm! If NASA had 500 times more money, what could they do beyond their current goals - and how much more quickly or fully could they achieve those goals?

And how about all the private space start-ups out there - can you imagine what they could do? Let's say that we give $30 billion to each of 100 private space companies. That's six times NASA's annual budget. We know their operations are much more agile and cost-efficient than NASA... the mind boggles.

Or we could pour the money into building a space station in Earth orbit, a la 2001: A Space Odyssey. This feasability study suggests a space hotel could be built for $28 billion, including the high launching costs of using Shuttle-based launches. Expect the next-gen NASA heavy lifters to dramatically reduce launch cost, then factor in cost savings from even-more-efficient launchers, volume of launches, and so on, and it could be done far more cheaply. So we could likely build a hundred such stations or a single, massive habitat the size of a city in space for the cost of this pointless, destructive war.

Oooh, how about a Moonbase or a Mars colony? Estimates for the currently planned, manned Moon-and-Mars projects range from $230 billion to $500 billion. Assuming the high-end estimate is more realistic, we could either scale up the projects to six times their current size or speed the projects along (I suggest scaling up, as they're pretty short-sighted right now).

Perhaps we could funnel those trillions into developing and building a space elevator? Using technology available today, one estimate for the materials cost of building a space elevator is $450 million. That leaves a lot of room for cost-overruns and labor, as that figure is less than 1/6,000 of the cost of the Iraq war. Stated another way, we could build dozens of space elevators in every nation for the cost of the war. Mind-boggling that we chose to go to war instead, isn't it?

So yeah, you get the idea. There's no reason we couldn't establish a permanent human presence in space with the money we're spending on the Iraq war. The dividends that would pay are unknown but certainly higher than anything positive that could possibly result from invading and occupying a Middle-Eastern nation.

Eliminate our Dependence on Oil

Just about everyone concedes that the Iraq war is about oil. If we didn't need it, would our government really care about what happens in the Middle East? I doubt it. Oh, and I think everyone agrees that burning oil is perhaps not the best thing for the long-term health of our environment. So let's look at how $3 trillion could help end our oil addiction... and possibly save the world for future generations.

According to FPL Energy, ...wind-generated electricity has become more economical to produce in the past 10 years, dropping from as much as 30 cents per kilowatt-hour to 4 to 7 cents... the cost to develop and build a wind energy facility is approximately $1.3 million to $1.7 million per megawatt.

Okay, let's look at wind, alone (there are lots of other options, too, but I live in windy Kansas). Here's a diagram of current United States energy consumption:

Click the image to see the story.

Overall, the US uses about 40 quadrillion (40,000,000,000,000,000) BTUs of petroleum energy per year (to get electrical units, divide BTUs by hours in a year - 8760 - and then by 3413 to get kW/hr). In more conventional terms, that's about 1,337,887,502 kilowatt/hours or 1,338 megawatts. Assuming that volume production and other efficiencies reduce the cost of building wind turbines to $1 million per megawatt, constructing wind generators to replace all of the US petroleum consumption - that includes industrial, transportation, home, and everything - would have a total price tag of $1.3 billion... is that correct? If so, why aren't we doing it?

Help me with my math here; I got $11.7 trillion using another calculation. Let's assume the higher number is correct, because if the cheaper number is true, I feel like firing our entire government right now.

So, okay, $11.7 trillion is four times our war-alternative budget, so let's look at this more realistically.

The US is the third-largest producer of oil in the world at 8,367 barrels per day. Unfortunately, we use 20,588 barrels per day, a deficit of 12,221 barrels per day. So all we really need to do to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil is use about 2/3 less oil. Oh, and once those generators are built, we start raking in profits from selling the electricity; you know, instead of paying other people for consuming their oil.

So cut our budget for going all-wind-power by two-thirds, add in profits from that electricity, and you obviate the need for such a war. Heck, it just makes fiscal sense to invest in a profit-generating venture than burn money, pollute the air, and accelerate global warming.

Didn't anyone in the NeoCon Planning Office take this into account? Surely they could have hired Halliburton to do all the construction, giving their cronies the same money - assumedly why they're doing this in the first place - without all the death and destruction.

I was going to offer other suggestions, but this is just making me depressed to consider how else we could have spent the wasted trillions. In fact, I started this post a month ago but stepped away when I realized just how stupid is our government for engaging in such a wasteful, destructive adventure when we could instead be making the world a better place and ensuring the survival and growth of the human species.

So: Instead of building the science-fiction future we all dream of occupying, the NeoCons set us on the path toward the dystopic futures also depicted in SF. Thanks.

Chris out.

This little tidbit in the news - which probably won't get very widely reported - could well result in World War III and the end of the world as we know it.

Am I over-reacting? Hopefully. But we know that China has threatened to invade Taiwan if it makes a move toward independence. And we know that the United States has declared that it will defend Taiwan against any such aggression.

Considering that most of our conventional military forces are wrapped up in the damned-fool NeoCon adventures in the Middle East¹, we would have to respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan using unconventional weapons, or else we'd be seen as impotent - something the NeoCons cannot abide. Using unconventional weapons against the Chinese invasion would prompt them to do the same. In addition, every little anti-American national and terrorist leader out there would see this as the green light to unleash their own unconventional weapons against us and everyone else they hate.

If we were not over-extended in Iraq, I doubt that China would invade Taiwan. But with things as they are now, my doubt drops way down. About the only thing that can stop it now is if one of the scary intelligence agencies of the world executes (or threatens to execute) Chen before the movement comes up for a vote. How much do you want to bet that this happens? Or he has a middle-of-the-night "heart-felt conversion" to the other point of view, followed shortly thereafter by a resignation and a move to another country.

Yes, though this little news item doesn't say it aloud, it suggests that the Bush Administration might well end modern Human civilization (or at least the US as we know it) and possibly the Human species itself. I guess they would get their totalitarian government if this all comes to pass, one way or another. How's that for a legacy?

Best wishes,
Chris

¹ ...As part of their efforts to establish a totalitarian government in the US. Or so it would seem - why else would we be in Iraq? Weapons of mass destruction? No, only to feed fear in US citizens and keep up the new-enrollment rolls for al-Queda et al.

This image of the Earth being hit by a large-ish asteroid links to an interview with astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who's leading the effort to identify and track all the near-Earth asteroids and devise a plan to save the species when threatened by them.

Click the image to see the story.

In sum:

"We literally are the top of the pyramid of life in the universe, as far as we know. At least in this corner of the universe, we're it. And it seems to me that we have collectively a certain responsibility to see this incredible experiment in life continue. It seems to me there is a kind of obligation, since we're self-reflective beings, to take some responsibility for the future. It's not something to lose sleep over, but safeguarding the future of life, that's something worth working on."

Hear, hear! By the way, his organization dedicated to identifying and preparing for near-Earth asteroids is the B612 Foundation. Check it out.

Best,
Chris

Earth Day was yesterday, folks, so in honor of that, here's Bill Maher's commentary:

The Birds, the Bees, and Earth Day

by Bill Maher

New Rule: From now on Earth Day really must be a year round thing. And in honor of this Earth Day, starting Monday supermarket clerks must stop putting the big bottle of detergent with a handle on it in a plastic bag. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, but you see that handle you just lifted the detergent with?

I can use that same handle to carry the detergent to my car. And stop putting my liquor in a smaller paper sack before you put it in the big paper sack with my other stuff. What, are you afraid my groceries will think less of me if they see I've been drinking? Trust me, the broccoli doesn't care, and the condoms already know.

Here's a quote from Albert Einstein: "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Well, guess what? The bees are disappearing. In massive numbers. All around the world. And if you think I'm being alarmist and that, "Oh, they'll figure out some way to pollinate the plants..." No, they've tried. For a lot of what we eat, only bees work. And they're not working. They're gone. It's called Colony Collapse Disorder, when the hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, and all that's left are a few queens and some immature workers -- like when a party winds down at Elton John's house. Also, if your stinger stays up more than 48 hours, call your doctor.

But I think we're the ones suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder. Because although nobody really knows for sure what's killing the bees, it's not al-Qaeda, and it's not God doing some of his Old Testament shtick, and it's not Winnie the Pooh. It's us. It could be from pesticides, or genetically modified food, or global warming, or the high-fructose corn syrup we started to feed them. Recently it was discovered that bees won't fly near cell phones -- the electromagnetic signals they emit might screw up the bees navigation system, knocking them out of the sky. So thanks guy in line at Starbucks, you just killed us. It's nature's way of saying, "Can you hear me now?"

Last week I asked: If it solved global warming, would you give up the TV remote and go back to carting your fat ass over to the television set every time you wanted to change the channel. If that was the case in America, I think Americans would watch one channel forever. If it comes down to the cell phone vs. the bee, will we choose to literally blather ourselves to death? Will we continue to tell ourselves that we don't have to solve environmental problems -- we can just adapt: build sea walls instead of stopping the ice caps from melting. Don't save the creatures of the earth and oceans, just learn to eat the slime and jellyfish that nothing can kill, like Chinese restaurants are already doing.

Maybe you don't need to talk on your cell phone all the time. Maybe you don't need a bag when you buy a keychain. Americans throw out 100 billion plastic bags a year, and they all take a thousand years to decompose. Your children's children's children's children will never know you but they'll know you once bought batteries at the 99 cent store because the bag will still be caught in the tree. Except there won't be trees. Sunday is Earth Day. Please educate someone about the birds and the bees, because without bees, humans become the canary in the coal mine, and we make bad canaries because we're already such sheep.
=====

Best,
Chris

Terminator Now, anyone?

But I have to admit that this is kewl.