The Last Great Heresy Part II

You can’t swing a dead polar bear these days without hitting something related to the global warming/renewable energy/we’re-all-gonna-die parade. What we seem to be fed looks like an amalgamation of the above three themes, hopelessly intertwined. Lacking the skills to craft a better descriptor I’ll refer to it as the Environmental Movement. For some time now the Environmental Movement has bothered me in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The reason finally crept in on me over the past few weeks. It’s the frenzy coupled with righteousness.

A little dissection is in order. The renewable energy portion of this is perfectly legitimate. A five year old can understand that there are finite quantities of energies that we extract from earth. Planning for the day when we’re out of those energy sources is simply thinking ahead. There does seem to be an underlying current (sorry, no pun intended) that we should have been doing this all along. The truth is that technology has just now progressed to the point where we can begin to peer over the mountain top and into the next valley. (For an excellent breakdown consult this roundup by the always stellar Popular Mechanics.) This will probably take a generation or two, so people need to relax a bit and let Mohammed come to the mountain. The infrastructure build out that allowed the automobile to become ubiquitous took almost two generations, culminating with the Eisenhower Interstate System.

This leaves us with the global warming/we’re-all-gonna-die remainder. Frenzies are almost universally unhealthy. P.J. O’Rourke hit on this a little in Give War a Chance. He’s writing during the We Are the World/Live Aid days on the mid-80’s.

"A mob, even an eleemosynary mob, is an ugly thing to see. No good ever came of mass emotion. The audience that’s easily moved to tears is as easily moved to sadistic dementia. People are not thinking under such circumstances. And poor, dreadful Africa is something that surely needs thought. "

These words were echoed over twenty years later by the greatest heretic of the Environmental Movement: Bjorn Lomborg. In an interview with PBS’s Newshour he said “I would argue that it’s very unlikely we make sound decisions if we are scared witless.” It’s an excellent interview and Lomborg raises some great points I have not seen anywhere else. Bjorn is the Martin Luther of the Environmental Movement. His book The Skeptical Environmentalist is the modern equivalent of the 95 Theses. The hard factual analysis offered by the book is the antithesis of frenzy. Letting go of the frenzy doesn’t mean letting go of concern. It can simply mean you’re injecting sound analysis and judgment.

Ares

Mullet Man

The Mullet Man Triathlon of 2007 has passed into history. And no, that isn’t my actual time. Start times were staggered, so you can subtract some from that. As with half marathons, your first one is just about surviving. That reference to surviving isn’t so trite when you consider the surf and currents we had to contend with. A nice easterly 25 knot wind was ripping white caps out beyond the 3 to 4 foot surf. Sixty six degrees sounds cold for a water temperature, but I had bigger things on my mind, like not drowning. Once we got out past the surf zone the current and wind continued to play hell with me. I ate a lot of seawater. Actually called over the lifeguard guy in a kayak to just sort of hang out with me. He was a great guy with a Kiwi accent who talked to me for a bit. I found out later that two people had to be rescued from the water. The guy next to me in the transition area told me he barfed during the swim.

The outbound half of the bike leg was great. Wind at my back, iPod in the ears, no surf trying to drown me. I practically flew. Had it in max gear for most of the trip. Until the return trip, where I had to ride into the face of that wind. It was like trying to ride with a deployed parachute on your back. Dropped down to midpoint in the gears and still was only able to make about half the speed on the return leg. Disgusted at the amount of time and effort the return leg took, I was happy to finally get down to the running. Aside from not being able to unlock my lower legs for the first 2/3 it was fine. I was able to genuinely sprint the last 200 yards.

Overall it wasn’t too bad. It’s definitely less effort than a half marathon. No post-race or day after aches or soreness. I found some serious holes in my training regimen. The first is the idea that I actually can swim. I plan on getting some professional coaching before I think about another one. Adam’s already trying to talk me into another. I think I need to, just to prove I can do more than merely survive. Oh, and one final note. The gulf coast of Alabama is about as white trash as you can get. It’s like the Bahamas and a trailer park had a kid, and the trailer park got the beach in the divorce.

Ares

The Long Tail

I finally finished working my way through The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. I won’t even begin to attempt to explain what the Long Tail signifies in a powerlaw distribution. Watch Anderson’s presentation at Pop!Tech. It’s an interesting pulse check of this societal event horizon we seem to be living. It would be easy to dismiss the book as an Internet treatise, but the implications are much wider. Don’t just think Amazon making the bulk of its money on obscure titles; think of Al Qaeda moving mass violence down the scale from nation-state monopoly to “Super-Empowered Individuals”.

Companies like Amazon and Netflix make the bulk of their money by selling an abundance of non-mainstream titles. “As of early 2006, Apple had sold 42 million iPods and 1 billion tracks on iTunes…” Here’s the really interesting fact: At the time of writing the book every single track on iTunes had been downloaded at least once. It’s a niche consumer culture wonderland. This may look like materialist hedonism, but it expands our world and culture in ways we’ve just begun to explore. While there are no institutional checks and balances on the blogosphere it tends to have a better error-correction rate than mainstream media. (A visual display of blogosphere would look like an iceberg, with places like Instapundit, Boing Boing, and Engadget above the waterline. Your current location is far, far beneath the waterline. The above-water blogs are what Anderson’s referencing when he talks about error-correction.)

The transformation went from having our mediums structured for us (newspapers, broadcast TV, inventory in book and music stores) to having everything available to us (Amazon and NetFlix’s seemingly boundless and ever available inventories, blogs and news of every possible variety). And this transition was missed by every single traditional media and entertainment institution. In the face of enormous evidence and slow asphyxiation most traditional institutions are clinging to last-century paradigms. Interesting aside to this point: The toughest DVD to find is WKRP in Cincinnati. Why? They won’t license all the music played on the show.

This is one of the most tightly compressed cultural shifts in human history. Tectonic social shifts have traditionally moved people to extremes. This time is no exception. The difference here is that for the first time it's easier for people to opt in than opt out. I'm curious where this is headed, and where we'll be in another generation when this has sorted itself out.

Ares

Think You Used Enough There Butch?

Kinda speaks for itself. This is why you shouldn't let grown men play with explosives. Somebody is probably still filling out forms over this one.




Ares

Two Days Later

There’s nothing left to say. I wish someone would take a hint and simply leave these people alone to grieve and heal as best they can. I can’t remember ever being so impressed and so revolted at the same time. The media has, quite frankly, made as ass of itself from the start. It began with looping the same footage over and over again, for hours on end, of police and ambulances rushing to the scene. Then there were the incisive questions during the press conference, such as “If you knew who the gunman was after the first shooting why did you let him go so he could kill more people?” Now CNN has the dancing silhouette of crosshairs going in the background all the time. (This infuriates me in ways I’m still trying to get a handle on.) Another favorite question was why police didn’t do something after the gunman wrote the disturbing play for creative writing class. If we’re going to follow that line of stupid logic, ignoring that whole constitution thing, the police should be en route to arrest Tarantino, Rodriguez, and the staff writers at CSI, Law & Order, and Murder She Wrote.

The redemption, if there is any to be had, has been watching these kids at VT. To a person every one I’ve seen has been calm, articulate, and focused. Thus far they’ve been the embodiment of character. It’s worth remembering that these kids were all in their early teens when an entirely different crop of evil flew a pair of planes into the World Trade Center. They learned early and well that there are no guarantees in life and adjusted accordingly. They refused to succumb to paralyzing fear, both then and now. Resilient is the word that comes to mind. One hell of an example for the rest of us. I’m not too worried about the next generation.

Ares

The Media Orgy Will Commence in 3, 2,....

As of now the death toll stands at 22 at Virginia Tech. Stand by for the over-wrought, over-worked, microscopic introspection to follow. By tonight it will have its own graphics and theme music on the network news channels. By tomorrow morning there will be a parade of victim’s relatives being asked those oh-so insightful questions like “How do you feel?”. By this time tomorrow someone, somewhere, will find some way to blame the president. It’s doesn’t matter how obscure or out there the person is, they’ll get some variety of face time. The left will use this to advance a gun-control agenda. The right will use this to advance a family breakdown/we need more religion meme. And what will we as a society get out of all this theater and posturing? Nothing.

Ares

Read This

Bit of a geek’s digression here. For years I’ve wanted the powers that be to produce some sort of e-book; a device like an oversized PDA that can display electronic texts. Sony has finally taken a step in that direction with the Reader. It’s a baby step, but a step nonetheless.

An e-book won’t ever take the place of traditional bound volumes. Nobody longs to sit at the beach under an umbrella with a computer on their lap. (Nobody except my boss, who’s his own form of damaged.) A rainy night in front of a fireplace with a computer just doesn’t have the same ring. That said there are some very practical applications for an e-book. One of the best features is the ability to load several books onto a single device. Every time I go on vacation I end up packing several books as I’m never sure what I’ll be in the mood for. Also, e-books should have the ability to display PDF files. This would be a great leap forward. PDF is the standard for online publishing. Reading PDFs on a computer gets tiresome after a while. (Try reading this online without going cross-eyed.) A better interface would help.

If the publishing industry was a little more forward thinking they would realize this technological leap could save their bacon. What are the production costs to put out a million copies of an electronic text? Older works that are in the public domain could be digitized and sold for almost pure profit. As I’m learning in reading The Long Tail, the money lies in the niches and not the big hits. Amazon has mastered this but run up against the physical barriers of storing and shipping. A little fact I learned from the book: Amazon has started digitizing some titles and printing them on demand when ordered.

The Sony Reader has some serious limitations that will keep me away. The first is it’s monochrome screen. That was probably a trade-off for size and power consumption, but a color display is non-negotiable. Second is Sony’s iTunes-style online store. The lack of title diversity will be rectified with time. Prices will have to become more reasonable. There is no good reason to charge 10 bucks for 200 year old book that is no longer copyright protected. I suspect that Amazon or Google will rescue this orphan and make it their own. Finally, the $350 price tag is simply too much. It’s gonna have to be less that half that price before anyone but the truly geeky will take interest. However, it’s worth remembering that CD players were nearly a grand 20 years ago and there were almost no titles available. Same for VCRs and DVD players. History has shown that “if you build it they will come”. Somebody please build it.

Ares

Imus Killed the Governor

Or nearly killed the governor of New Jersey. Seems Jon Corzine was coming back from negotiating a little love-in between Imus and the Rutgers basketball team when he got smashed up on the freeway. Imus should have seen this coming, people getting hurt as a result of his words. I say we indict him.

Let me see if I’ve got the stage right in this little production. An entertainer says something about a group of college basketball players and a governor is required to negotiate the situation. Somebody called me an asshole at work last week; get Condi Rice on the phone. And Jessie “Hymietown” Jackson has the moral high ground here?

Al Sharpton lied, people died.

Ares

God Bless you, Dr. Vonnegut

Sad tidings to report here at A&A. Kurt Vonnegut has gone to the great beyond, and we’re all left lacking as a result. Slaughterhouse Five was required reading in Miss Woodward’s 11 grade English class and I loved her for it. Slaughterhouse Five led to Cat’s Cradle led to The Sirens of Titan led to Player Piano led to Breakfast of Champions led to Hocus Pocus, which eventually led to Richard Brautigun’s Trout Fishing in America in my modern fiction education. Kurt had a long life, probably a lot longer that he ever thought he would have. He drank too much, smoked too much, and was his own man when it came to his work. The Frank Sinatra of modern literature. Vaya con Dios.

Ares

Pop! Tech

Sorry material has been so light, been a slave to that wage thing for a few days. Rest assured when I tell you I had a full entertainment package on somebody else’s nickel. However, blogospheric silence doesn’t equate to wasted time on my part. Found a little gem in the form of Pop!Tech. (I’d suck at trying to explain it, so I’ll just link to their description.) I first heard about it through Barnett’s website, as he was a speaker at last year’s event. Turns out they’ve posted some of the highlights from previous years on their website. Absolutely beautiful brain food. Really smart people explaining the world from different perspectives. The difference here is that there aren’t any CNN-style “We’re all gonna die!” undertones.

Thomas Friedman’s First Law of Petro Politics borders on brilliant. The amazing part of his hypothesis is that he’s a journalist: This nexus was missed by all the academics and intellectuals. Friedman was the guy that posited the theory that no two countries with a McDonalds had ever fought each other. Juan Enriquez’s presentation was stellar. I plan on watching that one a few times, just to catch it all. Chris Anderson’s bit was good enough that I’m now working my way through his book on the same topic. As I’ve said before, I’m a huge Barnett fan so his presentation was simply intellectual dessert for me. Well worth the time. View, enjoy, and be sure to discuss.

Ares

I Got Nothing

My brain is shot. In light of this I've decided to offer up a little more Chuck, because you can't have too much Chuck. Actually, you can and it would probably lead to institutionalization. This is from Lullaby.

"Several years ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. .... Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? .... You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?"

Ares