Shearing a Pig

On the drive home this evening, listening to All Things Considered, I burst out laughing from the following (translated) quote from Vladimir Putin, regarding Edward Snowden:

I personally don't want anything to do with this question, because it's like shearing a pig: a lot of shreaking, but not much fur. [source]

LED lighting and microeconomics

If you believe Michelle Bachmann, the legislated phase-out of the incandescent lightbulb is a facet of an insidious plot to destroy freedom [1] [2] [3]. We reserve the right to be as idiotically wasteful as we please!

You can guess from my sarcasm that I don't give that much creedence. But sticking to the incandescent is, with all apologies and respect to Thomas Edison, a downright stupid thing to do. Why? It's more expensive. Reserving your right to be as idiotically wasteful as you please is also reserving your right to throw away money and needlessly contribute to the ruination of our one and only home. Hoarding 100-watt bulbs in your basement? Congratulations: you have just tied yourself to a decade of spending much more than necessary to light your home. You are doing no one, particularly our nation, our freedom, and our planet, any favors. I'll get to the numbers in a minute.

I can understand the reticence. Look at a typical 60-watt incadescent - it costs less than a dollar. Burns out: swap it and go on with your life. Now compare to what had, until recently, been the primary alternative - the compact fluorescent. I have paid to replace incandescents with CFLs in three residences over the last decade - a few dozen bulbs from different manufacturers at varying price points. The energy savings are undeniable. The steady-state color is pleasant from most bulbs. The mercury content didn't bother me much; it was a manageable inconvenience. I've never had much use for dimmer switches.

But, despite my environmental leanings, I had my gripes with the CFL. The turn-on time was the biggie for me. Some of my bulbs came on to full brightness immediately. But many, and unfortunately some I used most often, would be sluggish. Coming down to the kitchen in the pitch black of a January morning, with the thermostat showing 55F, flicking the switch would spark a weak, sickly pale, purplish green glow, which would take a minute or more to demonstrate itself worthy of being called light. There were probably better bulbs out there, but at $5/ea, it's not something I could change out casually. Besides: what to do with the old bulbs? yes, I could recycle them, but they are still perfectly serviceable and represent a significant "sunk energy" cost in their manufacture.

But I am very optimistic about the future of lighting: LEDs. I've tinkered with LEDs in one form or another since college. I've even incorporated them into Brynna's nightlight. I've followed the development of the LED lighting industry from niche to mainstream. I would say that the products available now, from reputable vendors, are ready for widespread adoption for the uncompromising masses. A decade from now, I'm willing to assert, in my capacity as an engineer, that there will be little justification for buying another incandescent.

And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.

I will be the first to admit that digital photography is a difficult way to judge lighting. My own equipment is not exactly stellar for this task either. The camera is not an eye. Still, bear with me.

Which are incandescent? Which are CFL? Which are LED?

The answer is that there are no incandescents. The two bulbs in the hanging fixture are CFLs. The recessed lights (seven in the kitchen and pantry) are LEDs. You are seeing them here at full brightness. Were I to turn them off, let them cool for a few hours, then return and flick the switch, the recessed lights would be back at that full brightness in the blink of an eye. That's the big sell for me: the instant-on. The fact that they do not contain mercury, are less energy intensive to produce than CFLs, last longer, use less power for equal or better light, and are entirely compatible with dimmer switches are nice bonuses. And this technology will only get better and cheaper.

The recessed lights you see here are sold under the EcoSmart brand at Home Depot and retailed for $35 apiece. I also managed to score a $10/ea rebate from the local utility (take that, RGGI haters). They replace the entire recessed can, but screw into the standard socket at the back. Installation took all of three minutes apiece.

Now for some numbers. These bulbs are rated for 30,000 hrs lifetime. Given how they are used in our home, that works out to a decade or two. The rebate I got is not universally available, but you can probably find something in your area. Let's call the cost $30 apiece. That works out to an amortized cost of $0.001/hr. To produce the equivalent light of a 65-W incandescent, these pull about 10 W. If you take my monthly electric bill and divide by the energy used, it runs about $0.18/kWh. All told, the operating cost per bulb works out to about 1/3-cent per hour.

Compare to an incandescent. A little searching will find a 65-W PAR 30 bulb retailing for about $2. It will last upwards of 2000 hours. This yields an amortized capital cost of, TADA!, $0.001/hr. In other words, hour for hour, the new LED fixture costs the same to purchase as the conventional incandescent. The LED bulb uses 1/6th the power to produce the same light, and so it costs 1/6th as much to operate.

This is a clear win. Over their lifetime, I estimate each LED fixture will save me $100-$200; about $1000 just for this one room.

The comparison to a CFL is a bit tricker and less clear cut. A CFL bulb will run perhaps $10-15 (depending on quality), last about 1/2 as long, and use a touch more power than an LED. Depending on how you work these estimates, the CFL can be the cheaper option in terms of Total Cost of Ownership. However, as I mentioned above, I have grown dissatisfied with CFLs. CFLs may be great in most respects compared to incandescents, but they now seem like a poor compromise compared to what's available now in LEDs. So why aren't we all running out to the local big box store for a mass conversion? There are plenty of reasons. Consumer inertia is one reason. By that I mean that consumer behavior is difficult to change. Plenty of people (my electrician included) stick with incandescents as the default choice because of their consistency, long standing existence, and low upfront cost. Those who were inclined towards CFLs on their merits have largely already converted, and aren't too anxious to junk that investment. Other consumers have been burned (figuratively) by CFLs for a variety of reasons; deserved and otherwise. Lots of people rent, and why make capital improvements in a place you don't even own? I also admit that, as an engineer, these kinds of calculations and considerations are second nature to me; most people simply cannot be bothered. That's OK to an extent: there are plenty of matters that, being outside my area of expertise and experience, I simply cannot be bothered with. Cost is probably the biggest hurdle. I've converted the kitchen because it is the lighting we use most frequently. It's the place with the greatest room for improvement over CFLs. The PAR30 form factor (i.e., recessed can) provides a more favorable economic and aesthetic case compared to the usual bulb. Even so: I dropped a few hundred dollars for this one room. Sure, they'll save lots of money over their lifetime, several times what I've put in, but it's still a lot of money. There's a decent chance, too, that we won't even live in this house long enough to recoup the investment.

The way that I look at it is the way that I think many people will eventually come to look at it - as a capital investment. Think of all the important components in your home: the heating and cooling equipment, the toilet, the refrigerator, the stove. Why shouldn't we start to view lighting as another big ticket item along these lines? When a lightbulb's lifetime can be measured in decades, it has moved out of the category of consumable items like toilet paper, razor blades, dish detergent, automotive oil. Instead, it has become a piece of equipment: something that is installed in the home; a fixture.

Election Retrospective

If I were a serious blogger still, and not shy about spouting forth my opinion online, I would have gotten about 100 posts out there this past election season. Certainly there was plenty I would have liked to have said. But, really, given the size and mostly like-mindedness of my audience, it would not have been all that persuasive or useful.

Now that the election is over, what I have to say about the current state of politics is even less relevant. So, rather than wondering aloud about the future of the GOP, or fretting about the fiscal cliff, or prognosticating on whether Obama's got any mojo left for the next four years, I have a different plan. I find that the best antidote to the sturm und drang of presidential politics is satire and silly fun. The creator of the youtube channel Bad Lip Reading understands that, and created a number of hilarious videos.

Ahmed, how did you know about whodunnit in the lounge? Oh you didn't! They started clapping for the mad cow. Until someone sold him. And when he died they had him stuffed like that water buffalo: stuffed.

Cause even log legged women can't tell there's a blue-eyed hobbit, and I am a witness for them....Are you really drinking my bottled judgment? Y'all think I won't whip them pintos.

[Shucks, the man ain't funny even in parody.]

I had to fire someone. He was flippant. He was probably suffering....Let's go parachutin' on Tuesday....Oh yeah, I got swag. Because everybody needs toucan stubs!

Save a pretzel for the gas jets.

Where I'm from, mama gets a what-what. You know I represent!...And when I buy stickers for folks in prison, I bring milk, not backyard meth. It's a prison party.

Join the laughs: it's the only way to heal our nation!

Just a Theory

This was going to be a letter to the editor back in late August, when Gov. Rick Perry was the new hotness in the GOP presidential field, and had just concluded his first sweep through the Granite State. I set it aside for later editing and polishing (and cutting down to 300 words or less), and BAM! six weeks pass. Rick Perry is down, Herman Cain is up, ever-flexible Romney just keeps chugging along. For the purposes of this letter it doesn't matter much: the entire Republican field, more or less, has demonstrated great disdain and naivete about science.

According to Rick Perry, global warming is an unproven theory created by scientists to secure grants, and evolution is "just a theory that is out there" with a bunch of gaps. In these statements, Rick Perry has shown not only a profound ignorance about science, but also his disqualifications to be President.

To say that a scientific theory is "just a theory" is as understated and naive as saying that the Presidency is “just a job”; as though such labels carry no weight. For a theory to be labeled as such, it needs to withstand considerable and continuous rigor. A theory is a comprehensive body of work. It is a self-consistent explanation of observed phenomena that allows us to both understand and predict how the world works. This is an important distinction from the oft-conflated term hypothesis, which is a tentative explanation that has yet to be thoroughly tested and verified. Theories are never fully proven: they become established over time by consistently standing up to evidence. The more places you can find that evidence, and the more places you can apply the theory, the better. Theories can be modified and extended without forfeiting their essentials. Theories needn't be gap-free to be accurate statements. Newton's Theory of Gravity, for instance, is not a wholly accurate theory for black holes, nor did he posit a mechanism for action at a distance. Nevertheless, Newton's gravity is excellent for predicting the motions of the planets or landing on the Mars.

If Governor Perry thinks that General Relativity is just a theory, I ask him to hand over his GPS. Try explaining to an earthquake victim, or the entire oil and gas industry for that matter, that Plate Tectonics is just a theory. If Quantum Mechanics is just a theory, well, please give up all your electronics. If evolution is of no use, please sit by the bedside of someone dying of MRSA.

Theories can be falsified: we have formulated, accepted, disproven, and discarded more theories than we have kept. But neither evolution nor global warming have been broadly disproven. That is not just my belief: that is what the overwhelming weight of the evidence and majority of the global scientific community says.

Much of our present strength rests on science. Our future as a nation and global society will be determined, in no small part, on science and technology. You don't get to pick and choose what science to believe, and what science to casually reject. Nor do you get to enjoy the benefits of past science while blithely ignoring the consequences of present science. If Governor Perry thinks so little about science, then he is simply not qualified to be President.

Anyone else wish we could see a science debate in 2012? I won't hold my breath.

Argument

It seems to me that this wraps up the current state of politics in this country. Watch first, then read...

We go in seeking an argument: a reasonable back and forth of opposing viewpoints; sometimes heated. Instead, all we get is endless contradiction "no I didn't" "yes, you did!" Until one side declares that the argument has finished (Ding!), and won't argue any more until the other side coughs up a few quid. After which we get...more childish contradiction about the basics of what the argument is supposed to even be about.

In frustration, you storm off and want to register a complaint. But the complain sounding board has complaints of their own and can't be bothered to listen to yours.

Seeking a sympathetic audience you enter yet another room, and get a nasty knock on the head, with coaching instructions on how best to take this punishment.

All that's lacking is the humorous recursive punchline at the end.

Dilbert, Light Bulbs, and Oil

Like I sometimes do with the newspaper, let's skip over the serious stuff and go straight to the funnies.



This is, in a nutshell, the problem with our energy policy - the inability to weigh long term costs properly. Yup, it's going to cost a whole freakin' boatload of money and creative destruction to upgrade the electrical grid, bring renewables up to a very large fraction of the energy mix, scrap inefficient equipment with newer stuff, alter our whole infrastructure to not rely on cheap petroleum, and accept that leveling West Virginia mountaintops and shattering the bedrock is not actually a better alternative to funding up petro-dictatorships on credit. A fair bit of behavioral and attitude changes will be necessary, too.

Sadly, a whole pile of economic arguments, mountains of scientific data, the informed opinion of every regulatory body in the government, and most of the U.S. military doesn't seem to count for much against the overwhelming burden of ideology in Congress. The sooner we accept the big transformative changes that are necessary, the better off we'll be.

Most importantly: even if it costs a boatload of money and pain to start now, it will be a whole hell of a lot cheaper and easier than facing crisis after crisis when they hit. Our collective inability to internalize this notion, and demand that our elected leaders have this kind of long term policy, is a ruinous course.

Which brings us to my next exhibit of human irrationality: apparently there is some hubbub about the impending demise of the traditional 100-watt incandescent light bulb. I'll admit: they give off such pleasing color, and have been around for so long, that it's hard to let go. On the other hand, the engineer in me knows that they are only about 5-10% efficient at converting electricity to light and makes me eager to relegate them to the dust bin of history. Who actually likes being so willfully wasteful? If people were rational, we wouldn't need to worry about government intrusion. As a matter of national pride, we would have been dumping incandescents into Boston Harbor years ago and clamoring for alternatives.

And incandescents are wasteful not only of energy and the environment, but of the owner's hard earned money. Compact fluorescents, even the highest quality ones (indistinguishable from incandescents), can pay for themselves in a year or two. The LED lamp you buy today may well be the last light bulbs you ever buy for a particular socket. Yet there are people so worked up about an overbearing government that they are stockpiling 100-W incandescents for the upcoming end times (of Edison's little wonder). Do they not realize that they are spending roughly the same amount that it would cost to upgrade all their lamps to CFLs and LEDs? Or that their stockpile won't last as long are modern bulbs, and they'll spend 5-10x for the electricity over that lifetime?

And now for our third exhibit: rising gas prices. It seems to me that we've been here before quite a few times. Should we be surprised at this point? Outraged? If there is outrage, it ought to that nothing has changed since the last time three years ago. In fact, rather than repeat myself with much tedious typing, I'll just point you to what I said about it then.

The conventional wisdom, particularly from the wingnuts of the nut wing of the Republican party, is that if we just let the oil and gas companies pave paradise expand domestic production, everything will be fine. This position is, more or less, unchanged since the last gas price crunch. Remember Sarah Palin's big energy policy speech before the election? Neither does anyone else, but the echo chamber of "say it enough times and it'll be true" carries the message on to this day.

Here is a very simple calculus: the world consumes nearly 90 million barrels of oil per day. The U.S. consumes about 20. We produce about 6. 90-20-6. If we drilled everywhere and laid pipelines through everyone's backyard, we might be able to extract a few million barrels per day more...for a perhaps a decade, maybe two. Would that bring gas prices back to the heady days of $1/gal? Will we be less susceptible to the fickle nature of the global oil market? Probably not, because by the time we do all that drilling, worldwide demand will probably have expanded by just as much, leaving us more or less right back where we started. 100-25-10. What's worse, this is an energy policy (or, at least, a gasoline policy) that has a lifetime of a decade or two - less than a generation.

90-20-6. Before any politicians opens their mouth about energy policy, they should preface it with those numbers. Anything less is pandering, ignorance, or deception.

What's my solution: use economics. People are irrational in their behavior. Failure to weigh long term costs is just one example of that. But one lesson from the last gas price crunch that continues today is that when gas gets expensive, people use less of it. What cars are manufacturers and consumers most interested in today? Hybrids and electrics - even if they can't yet get behind the wheel of one.

If we ultimately want to use less oil, making it more available by increasing its supply is not the way to accomplish it. That is an axiom of economics. One way to use less oil is to make the alternatives less expensive, so that people choose to use less of it. That could work, but we would need to have at least one, and probably many, really cheap replacements for oil available today to make the compelling argument for a whole economy to switch over. I see nothing on the horizon to indicate that.

No, if we want to kick the habit, then make gas expensive. This, too, is an economic axiom, and it can be put in place quickly. It works with cigarettes: higher tobacco taxes lead to lower smoking rates. Turn gasoline into the latest vice, and tax it accordingly. The increased gas price can, and should, be offset by lowering taxes on a whole bunch of other things such as the income tax - possibly even making it revenue-neutral. It won't be the end of the world: Europe and Japan somehow manage to get by with gas more than twice as expensive as ours. Shorter commutes get promoted, importing from halfway across the world won't look so appealing, big agriculture's rapacious appetite for petroleum-sourced fertilizer will shift, the economics of alternatives become more favorable, and our road infrastructure gets less of a pounding. Conservatives always want to let the free market figure things out. Let it, but with the proviso that oil is no longer gets a free ride. And essentially it does: the federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, and hasn't changed in years. The price at the pump swings more than that in a week these days.

It would have one additional benefit: at times when the price of oil really is up, a high gas tax provides a way to immediately and substantially reduce the pain at the pump.

Although it may be good medicine, I'll admit the middle of a spike in gas prices is not the best time to introduce such a proposal. The time to do it was when we weren't facing a serious problem: a year or two back, when gas was $1-2/gal less than today. But might-have-beens don't count for much in debate, and even less in policy-making. We ought not to live in the past, even when history can be instructive. We are faced with the challenges of the present. What will we do about it?

If history is any indicator, we'll have another crack at lower gas prices eventually. But, alas, history also indicates that we'll probably skip that opportunity in the pursuit of more demagoguery and grandstanding. There's an election coming up, don'tcha know?

How Not to Make Oatmeal

Brynna occassionally enjoys having oatmeal for breakfast. She particularly enjoys it with Deen - it's one of the things they do together. Sometimes I attempt it, and Brynna is, usually, receptive.

When I do it, here's what's in it and how I make it:

1. Oats, about 1/3 cup dry


2. A few raisins or craisins for taste


3. boiling hot water


4. stir


5. If using rolled oats (not instant), cook in the microwave for about 20 seconds


6. 1/2 tsp maple syrup


7. 3 T unsweetened soy milk to cool things off and get the consistency right

Mark Bittman, who used to write minimalist recipes and cooking techniques for the NYTimes, has a weekly opinion piece on food policy. This might seem a dry subject, but what we eat, where it comes from, how it's made, and how we eat it is no small matter. In today's piece, Bittman describes the travesty that is McDonald's take on oatmeal. Some of the highlights:

They’ve made it more expensive than a double-cheeseburger: $2.38 per serving in New York.

I use oats from the bulk food section, possible five cents' worth. My other ingredients are pricier, but the infallable back-of-the-envelope tells me I'm still below $0.40.

“Cream” (which contains seven ingredients, two of them actual dairy) is automatically added; brown sugar is ostensibly optional, but it’s also added routinely unless a customer specifically requests otherwise. There are also diced apples, dried cranberries and raisins, the least processed of the ingredients (even the oatmeal contains seven ingredients, including “natural flavor”).

I'll admit that soy milk is hardly a naturally occurring product: it takes some work to turn raw soybeans into a healthful beverage. Even so, I can follow and understand the ingredient list, and the first two are filtered water and organic soybeans. Our maple syrup comes, unsurprisingly, from NH. The cranberries are sweetened, but it's with orange juice.

Incredibly, the McDonald’s product contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald’s cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin. (Even without the brown sugar it has more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger.)

When Brynna and I want to get crazy, we'll add some chopped walnuts.

Airline Security

I won't be trite and say "The T'r'rists have Won!", but I have to wonder if Osama isn't laughing his ass off in a cave somewhere. Is this really what we have been reduced to? In the days following 9/11, there were many reactions floating in the national mood, and one of the strongest I remember was: we will not submit, we will not be afraid. We've had a string of near misses with terrorists since, and the result is that we've reduced ourselves to plaintively bleating at the government: Help Us, Protect Us, Save Us - no matter the cost! A decade later, we have citizens paying their government in taxes and dignity to buy machines that take naked pictures of every person who buys a plane ticket or, for the more recalcitrant or suspect, government agents groping the public.

And what do we, the traveling public, get in return? Some assurance that another underwear bomber might be caught, or that the risk of being caught will force a terrorist to try a different attack. It's unlikely we'll have another suicide hijacking a la 9-11. That was, however, largely the result of hardening cockpits and an awareness among travelers that they may need to fight back. So terrorists move to planting ineffective explosives in shoes, so we start walking through security barefoot. They concoct a complicated plan to mix explosives in shampoo bottles, so we ban anything larger than 3 oz containers. They put explosives in their underwear, so we get virtual strip searches and enhanced pat-downs. Hoop upon hoop, layer upon layer, cat chasing mouse.

It is, however, just a matter of time before a way is found around this latest countermeasure. How long will it be until we have a terrorist attack (either successful, another dud, or thwarted early) with a bomb tucked in a terrorist's rectum? And what shall we do then? Full-body X-Rays for travelers? With cavity searches for those who refuse? Meanwhile, our ports, borders, and important public places are still ripe targets. Maybe an airline attack is too hard, so terrorists will switch tactics and truck-bomb a mall. What will we, as a society, then do?

As an engineer, I deal with risk assessment every day. Risk is not just "how bad can things go wrong?", it is also a matter of probability. The product of the two is risk. Low risks can be events with severe consequences, but with such low probability that the risk can be considered remote. And high risk is not always the end of the game. It may be that the risk is inherent to the system, and cannot be mitigated short of utterly extraordinary measures. In the jargon of risk management, you'd say the risk is "As Low As is Reasonably Practicable." At that point, it becomes a calculus to determine whether the potential benefits outweigh those residual risks. For medical devices, this calculus largely falls to the FDA, doctors, and patients. An artificial heart is an enormously risky device: it or the surgery will almost certainly kill you. On the other hand, if you are dying for a heart transplant that may be minutes or months away, it may not look so bad.

In terms of security, one can perform similar analyses. What are the potential threats, what are the possible outcomes of a security breach, what's the probability of that harm coming to pass, and what would it cost to mitigate that risk? There isn't a single answer to these questions: some people or institutions are more or less risk tolerant, some have more or less to lose, and some have more or fewer means to beef up security. At some point, however, everyone will have a limit where the additional costs cannot be borne, the residual risk is too small, and the additional costs outweigh the potential benefits. You draw a line, accept you can't or won't do more, and live with it.

So here's my take on the present subject or airline security. On the potential benefit side we have the reduced likelihood of a terrorist attack on an airplane and all the accompanying potential losses: loss of life, property damage, damage to the American psyche, and potential further cost as we roll out the latest countermeasure. That all seems like a very high toll - and it is. But it was a highly improbable event in the first place. So I count the risk as actually being pretty low, not only for myself as an individual, but also for my family and for the nation as a whole. On the cost side we have the direct costs for the scanners and personnel (a couple billion dollars at least), more lost time getting through security (billions and billions more), increased radiation exposure for travelers, increased road deaths as people throw up their hands and decide to drive, psychological damage at being either seen virtually nude or groped, and the enormous cost to the dignity and liberty of travelers. The potential for abuse or misconduct is high. And, lastly, it is not even clear, and certainly not demonstrable, that these new procedures are actually improving security, or that our resources would not be better spent, say, more thoroughly checking luggage or increasing human intelligence.

I tally this up and come to this conclusion: the costs of this latest security procedure are too high, and do not outweigh the potential (or hoped-for) benefits. For me, the line of diminishing returns was crossed some time ago. I can give some deference to the government being more conservative in their calculus: they have a duty to protect us, and their asses are on the line when something goes wrong. But even in that light, things have gone too far. Eventually, I think others will reach their own stopping point, but I fear what the traveling experience will be like by the time that happens.

Freedom of Religion.

Take note of the period at the end of the title.

The ongoing flap about the proposed Islamic center to be built two blocks from Ground Zero in New York is really one of the weirdest spectacles I can imagine. We're actually talking about this? I can understand some getting bent out of shape about it, but is this something that really requires debate?

Allow me to put this plainly: if the United States stands for freedom of religion, then we had better let our actions follow our principles. If the Constitution is really as sacrosanct as so many politicians (and a whole host of candidates) are proclaiming it to be on a daily basis, then they had better be ready to speak as fervently about freedom of religion as they do about the rest.

Some try to tiptoe around the first amendment on this one. Others are less successful at hiding their bigotry. Some come out and speak plainly, and do little more than equate Islam with being Un-American.

“Ground zero is hallowed ground to Americans,” Elliott Maynard, a Republican trying to unseat Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat, in West Virginia’s Third District, said in a typical statement. “Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?” - NYTimes

Yes, it is hallowed ground (though the way some speak of it borders on idolatry). And, yes, it is American hallowed ground. That is an important difference between Mecca and Ground Zero. Mecca is the seat of Islam; it belongs to Muslims. Ground Zero belongs to the United States. Would it be appropriate to allow a Jewish temple of Christian church to be built two blocks from the World Trade Center? Insofar as there are Jews and Christians in America, none would bat an eyelash. But an Islamic community center that also happens to have a mosque? Perish the thought!

And why? The point Mr Maynard seems to be making, appealing to our fear and distrust of The Other, is that Muslims should not be included as Americans. Do Muslims, as Americans, have less a claim to that hallowed ground than any other American? Do you really think that the only Muslims to die on 9/11 were those nutjobs flying the planes? Several dozen, at least, perished side by side with their fellow Americans.

In a city of over 8 million, the fire that heats our melting pot, I'm sure there are at least a few who would claim both the title of Muslim and American in the same breath.

Others, fearing to come off as xenophobes, simply try to couch it in terms of what's appropriate. They seek to draw analogies to whether one group has a right to contribute to the memorial of another:

“Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington,” Mr. Gingrich said on the Fox News program “Fox and Friends.” “We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.” - NYTimes

To put it in these terms misses a key matter of representation. The Nazis represented Germany as far as the Holocaust is concerned; the Imperial military represented Japan in 1941. These are acts perpetrated by nation-states during a war. That doesn't excuse the behavior - just as it doesn't excuse the suffering rendered by the United States at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whose anniversaries passed just as this was heating up. As far as I know, there is no American presence at the atomic bombing sites. For better or for worse, the citizens of those countries bear the collective guilt of what was done by their governments in their name.

Al Qaeda does not represent Islam. To believe otherwise is to take a particularly craven and perverted view of the world. To paraphrase The West Wing, Al Qaeda is to Islam what the KKK is to Christianity. I could think of other examples. Does Westboro represent all Baptists? Does the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ represent all Mormons? Shall we paint all pro-lifers with the same brush we use for the Army of God? Perhaps we shall lump all members of PETA and all vegetarians together with the Animal Liberation Front.

That is the important difference that Mr Gingrich either willfully or ignorantly glosses over. To say that a mosque should not be built in the vicinity of Ground Zero, because the perpetrators of 9/11 called themselves Muslims, is to say that all Muslims, including Muslim-Americans, bear the guilt of 9/11 and are, simply, not welcome.

And then there is the dear Sarah Palin: "Doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate." What kind of nonsense is she trying to propulgate here?

The president made the principled stand and used his bully pulpit to remind everyone that we do, in fact, have freedom of religion in this country. You may not like the ramifications, but that's just too bad. And if the Republicans harp on about him being out of touch with mainstream America - since when has the first Amendment been subject to referendum?

We are for freedom. Period.

Pay As You Throw

Concord has in the last month implemented a new municipal trash collection program: pay as you throw. It's pretty straightforward: you purchase these purple trash bags from local stores, which are picked up curbside as usual. Other trash bags and open containers of trash will not be collected. The bags cost about $1 for a 15-gal, and $2 for a 30-gal, and are bought in packs of five. Yes, that's a costly piece of plastic, but it buys you trash disposal. It works, in other words, much like a postage stamp: the purple bags have built into them a fee for a service. Previously, trash collection and disposal had been paid for through municipal taxes (or, for things like apartment buildings businesses, private contractors). According to the Concord Monitor, the average cost of trash collection and disposal for the single-family home was $195, of which $106 was paid through property taxes; the rest was subsidized through business taxes.

In conjunction with this purple bag rollout, the city has upped their co-mingled recycling pickup, which is free, from bi-weekly to weekly. They'll take most anything of any recycleable value, which means that there's actually a lot that needs to get thrown out. Hilary and I barely half-fill one 15-gal bag per week, while our blue recylcing bin is full to the brim. We eagerly greated the weekly recycling collection, as we'd easily overflowed our recycling bin with bi-weekly collections.

So far, it seems to have been a success. And yet, from reading op-eds in the local paper, you'd think that we were being subjected to eco-facism. Being New Hampshire, many thought this a drastic over-reach by the local government (will the trash-cops be handing out fines)? Some bellyached about the hardship of refraining from automatically throwing everything into the trash. One major downtown supermarket refused to stock the bags, because they cannot make any profit on them. Others wondered if they would next start charging for the air we breathe (impossible), the waste we flush (they already do), or the water we drink (they already do). One person complained about the economic hardship it places on his family: five 30-gallon trash bags a week! One argued that this is little more than an unfair regressive tax that burdens families with children and the poor (a debatable point). Yet another voiced about the only valid concern I've heard: that people will illegally dump their trash in surrounding communities.

Hilary and I have no problem with this program - we actually look favorably on it. It boils down to a simple matter of economics: if you want to discourage one type of behavior (throwing everything away pell mell), make it more expensive. If you want to encourage another type of behavior (increased recycling), make it free, convenient, and easy. Even were the bags to cost the same or less than ordinary trash bags, the simple fact that you need to put some thought into it raises one's consciousness about what, and how much, one is throws away. The city instituted this program largely because the cost of municipal trash collection and disposal was rising faster than tax revenues could support. Instead of a broad tax, which treated wasters and recyclers equally, and is thoroughly invisible to the end-user, this system is fee-based: pay as you throw. The more you throw out, the more you are required to chip in. Even better than that, you'll know that you are paying more for throwing out more; you see the full cost, and are thereby encouraged to change your behavior.

Palin's Big Energy Policy Speech

Didn't hear about it? I'm not surprised. Sarah Palin delivered her second big policy speech of the campaign on Wednesday, this one about energy. Or, rather, a load of waffle and platitudes that all boils down to: somehow, somewhere, we're going to burn our way to the future. Yeehaw!

Let me set the stage: Palin, the former commissioner of oil and gas for the Alaskan government, now the governor, is by extension supposed to be some sort of expert on energy policy. As I have mentioned earlier, knowledge of and reliance on oil and gas isn't nearly enough to inform someone on how to craft energy policy for the next generation. It might have been fine in, say, 1960, before the first oil embargoes and energy crises, and it was sure great around 1973, when the Alaska oil pipeline got the go-ahead. But, hey, it's 2008, and the decisions on energy policy for the next administration need to look forward to what we want to see come 2050, not 1950.

Palin gave her speech at the Xunlight factory in Toledo, which I feel added a certain dose of cognitive dissonance to the whole affair.

The text of the speech I'll be working off of comes from the McCain-Palin website. It starts off well enough:

All who work in pursuit of new and clean energy sources understand that America's energy problems do not go away when oil and gasoline prices fall, as they have in recent weeks. Oil today is running about 64 dollars a barrel -- less than half of what it was just a couple of months ago. And though this sudden drop in prices sure makes a difference for families across America, the dangers of our dependence on foreign oil are just as they were before.

The price of oil is declining largely because of the market's expectation of a broad recession that would lower demand. This is hardly a good sign of things to come, and should only add to our sense of urgency in gaining energy independence. When our economy recovers, and growth once again creates new demand, we could run into the same brick wall of rising oil and gasoline prices -- and now is the time to make sure that doesn't happen. In Washington, we can view this period of lower oil prices as just one more chance to make excuses -- and on the problem of energy security, we've heard enough excuses. Or we can view it as an opportunity to finally confront the problem.

In reality, volatile oil prices are just the most immediate consequence when foreign powers control our energy supplies. They are an economic symptom of a strategic problem. And prices will stabilize only when we have reached the great goal of energy security for America.

Not bad. One could almost hear the same from Thomas Friedman of the NY Times. Then comes the call to action and criticism of the past:

Achieving this objective will require a clean break not just from the energy policies of the current administration, but from thirty years' worth of failed policies in Washington. As in other challenges that confront our nation, we must shape events, and not simply manage crises. We must steer far clear of the errors and false assumptions that have marked the energy policies of nearly twenty Congresses and seven presidents. Some tasks will be the work of decades, and some the work of years. And they all will begin in the term of the next president.

I can give her some credit for calling out the current administration. All the cool kids are doing it these days. Really one could go on for hours about how backward the Bush administration has been on energy. If one counts back seven presidents, though, you get to Nixon, which means that you also include Jimmy "Cardigan" Carter, which hardly seems fair.

Nevermind. She continues into her well-worn in-the-trenches narrative of Alaska, and how qualified she is on energy policy (see my introductory paragraphs), how she took on the oil companies regarding a natural gas pipeline, and:

When the last section is laid and its valves are opened, that pipeline will lead America one step farther away from reliance on foreign energy. That pipeline will be a lifeline -- freeing us from debt, dependence, and the influence of foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.

While it is true that she strongarmed an agreement to get the pipeline built, it's not like the thing is set in stone. No definitive plans are in place, the deal could still fall through, no approvals have been given, no land purchased, no pipe has been laid, and it'll probably be another decade at least before the thing is actually built. More information here.

The notion that the pipeline will be a lifeline "freeing us from debt, dependence, and the influence of foreign powers" is demonstrably false. Bear with me while I introduce some numbers - they may be tedious, but if the policy-makers ever bothered to check them, we might get somewhere.

The United States consumes about 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year. (Because demand has seasonal fluctuations, I'll use an annual number.) We produce about 20 trillion domestically, and import 4.6 trillion; the rest is lost, stored, or exported.

So, right here, we find one fallacy. The US imports only about 20% of the natural gas we use. Of that 4.6 Tcf/yr we import, 3.8 Tcf comes in pipelines from Canada and Mexico, hardly the boogey-man countries that don't have our interests at heart. The rest comes as liquified natural gas - gas that has been compressed and cooled enough to become liquid and put onto special tanker ships. Of the 0.7 Tcf of LNG we import from abroad, 0.45 Tcf comes from Trinidad (of all places, who knew?). If you look at the list of who we get our natural gas from, we do find some sorta-unfriendly places, like Algiers, Egypt, Nigeria, and Qatar. But these still only add up to about 6% of our annual imports, so only about 1% of annual consumption.

The capacity of this new pipeline, whenever it comes online, will be 4.5 Bcf per day, or about 1.6 Tcf per year. So, it will increase domestic production by about 8%. It could, theoretically, offset 1/3 of the natural gas that we import (again, from Canada and Mexico). That ain't nothing, but it isn't all that the governor would like us to think it is. In fact, it is likely that, by the time the pipeline is finished, growth in demand will have already consumed the pipeline's contribution, meaning that not much will have changed.

So, we are neither in the thrall of foreign powers when it comes to natural gas, nor will this pipeline free us from the natural gas we import, mostly from allies.

Let's continue with the speech:

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world's oil supplies ... or that terrorists might strike at a vital refining facility in Saudi Arabia ... or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries ... we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas.

In the worst cases, some of the world's most oil-rich nations are also the most oppressive societies. And whether we like it or not, the money we pay for their oil only makes them more powerful and more oppressive. Oil wealth allows undemocratic governments to crush dissent and to subjugate women. Other regimes use it to finance terrorists around the world and criminal syndicates in our own hemisphere.

By relying upon oil from the Middle East, we not only provide wealth to the sponsors of terror -- we provide high-value targets to the terrorists themselves. Across the world are pipelines, refineries, transit routes, and terminals for the oil we rely on. And Al Qaeda terrorists know where they are.

Here comes another chestnut, partly false, that everyone loves to pull out: we are dependent on the Middle East for our oil. I won't pretend that, if OPEC wanted to flex its muscles, or Al Qaeda blew something up, we wouldn't take a hit at a pump. But it is easy to dispute that we get the majority of our oil from the Middle East. The US consumes about 20.7 million barrels of oil per day. We import about 13.5 million barrels per day, or about 65%.

That's a whole lot, but where is it coming from? Look closer at that table, you'll see we get about 2.1 million from the Persian Gulf, and 1.3 million from Venezuala. But then there's also 2.5 million from Canada, and 1.5 million from Mexico (bless 'em!). We haven't imported any from Iran since the early-1990s. In fact, we import about as much from OPEC as we do from producers outside OPEC. However, being a global commodity, the actions of OPEC impact the price of oil worldwide, so we have good reason to be wary of what Iran or Venezuala does with their oil.

So what should we do? McCain-Palin to the rescue:

In a McCain administration, we will authorize and support new exploration and production of America's own oil and gas reserves -- because we cannot outsource the solution to America's energy problem. Every year, we are sending hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country for oil imports, much of it from OPEC, while America's own oil and gas reserves in America go unused. And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both.

As a matter of fairness, we must assure affordable fuel for America by producing more of the trillions of dollars' worth of our oil and natural gas. On land and offshore, we will drill here and drill now!

I'll remind you here that she's giving this speech in a solar panel factory.

No. No. No. No. No. Drilling isn't the answer either. The simple fact remains that there isn't enough oil domestically to even come close to replacing that 13.5 million barrels we import each day. Even if we decided to drill in ANWR, the first oil wouldn't come online for 10 years. The Alaska pipeline has a peak capacity of about 2 million barrels per day. The North Slope fields used to fill that capacity; now they're down to less than half that. Let's say ANWR oil could pick up the slack, it's still only be about 5% of the oil we use each day, and only 1% of worldwide use. What of the continental shelf? Again, it's 5-10 years out, and still wouldn't be enough to offset our imports. (One interesting tidbit - to get at the continental shelf oil you need to drill very deep, which means you have to explore very deep. It turns out that the deep-drill rigs needed for that kind of work are already booked for years to come.)

Besides, being a global commodity, the oil we produce here wouldn't necessarily stay here, not unless McCain-Palin are ready to inaugurate high tariffs or other encumbrances to free trade. In order to have a real impact on prices at the pump, we'd have to start producing oil at a prodigious rate, something to make a dent in the global demand of about 85 million barrels per day. Even if we could, which we can't, should we? Oh, I forgot, this speech is being given by someone who didn't believe global warming was real.

She continues with a pledge that a McCain administration would put the country on track to build 100 new nuclear plants by 2030. I am ambivalent about nuclear - I don't like it, but find it to be a better and more practical part of a long term solution than, say, coal. Still, it's something that will take years and years to even get started. Bush pushed nuclear pretty hard, too, and new plants have yet to even begin construction. She doesn't address the hurdles to reprocessing or long-term storage that would make it possible, nor the related problems of skyrocketing uranium prices and nuclear proliferation. I'm told that, at least, she managed to pronounce it correctly. Whatever.

Then she launches into a blurb on clean coal, but mostly uses it as a flank to attack Obama and, especially, Biden. When she has exhausted that line of attack, she gets back to her point:

As for our coal resources, America has more coal than the oil riches of Saudi Arabia. Burning coal cleanly is a challenge of practical problem-solving and human ingenuity -- and we have no shortage of those in America either. So, in a McCain administration, we will commit two billion dollars each year, until 2024, to clean-coal research, development, and deployment. We will refine the techniques and equipment. We will deliver not only electricity but jobs to some of the areas hardest hit by our economic troubles.

The thing about it, though, is that clean coal doesn't exist - not in the rainbows, bunnies, and CO2-free way they mean it. We're probably as close to practical clean coal as we are to nuclear fusion. People understand the fundamentals of what needs to happen, more or less. But the devil's in the details, and no one's sure if it can be made to work on a large, cost-effective scale. No full-scale demonstration plant exists, and most attempts to build one have been stymied when people realize how expensive it will be. I have some hope for clean coal; but more than that, I hope we don't base our future strategy on it.

After speaking for twenty-some minutes, she starts winding it down to her conclusion and, finally, mentions alternatives and conservation:

To meet America's great energy challenge, John and I will adopt an "all of the above" approach. In our administration, that will mean harnessing alternative sources of energy, like wind and solar. We will end subsidies and tariffs that drive prices up, and provide tax credits indexed to low automobile carbon emissions. We will encourage Americans to be part of the solution by taking steps in their everyday lives that conserve more and use less. And we will control greenhouse gas emissions by giving American businesses new incentives and new rewards to seek, instead of just giving them new taxes to pay and new orders to follow.

Boooyah! There it is, folks! You came to a solar panel factory, and now is your moment. Don't bask in it too long, though, because this paragraph is the sole token gesture to folks like you. McCain has a sort of mixed relationship with renewables like solar and wind. He thinks they're great, but can't ever provide even a sliver of the U.S. power needs. I would say that lacks forward thinking. I don't want to go on and on about how McCain voted on what and when, because that can get very muddy very quickly. Suffice to say that McCain hasn't been very kind to wind in particular, and renewables in general.

What about increased mileage standards? What about smart grids and electric cars? What about distributed generation and micro-grids? What of stricter building codes? What about mandating LEED certification for every new federal building, and phasing in older buildings over time? What about national requirements for generating renewable energy? What about feed-in tariffs? What about increased federal funding for energy R&D (other than coal). What about expanding Energy Star requirements into more product categories? What about greening the military - the federal government's biggest user of energy? What about expanded long-haul freight and passenger rail? What about cellulosic ethanol and algae biodisel? What about geothermal, tidal, and other nascent technologies? What about loan programs and assistance in weather-proofing and winterizing older homes?

What about, heaven forbid, asking Americans to sacrifice - the thing that Bush and every member of government should have done on September 12th, 2001? No? Nothing? Let's continue...

Again and again, our opponents say that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems -- as if we all didn't know that already. But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

No, we can't "drill our way out of the problem" entirely. But this is America, the most resourceful country on earth, and we can drill, and refine, and mine, enrich, reprocess, invent, build, conserve, grow, and use every available means to regain our independence.

My problem with kind of thinking is that, when you look at the numbers, it's not just that drilling won't solve every problem, it won't solve any of our energy problems. Yet at the same time, it incurs tremendous costs that will have to be repaid for generations. As soon as you make a resource more available, there is an inevitable tendency to use more of it. When resources remain scarce and expensive, people will use less or find substitutes. Gas hits $4/gal, and people rethink their SUVs. If the Republicans are such big fans of the free market, why have they managed to forget the first principles about supply and demand? And if the oil within our borders is so valuable now, won't it be more valuable in a generation or two? Shouldn't we keep it in the ground until our needs are even greater? If we restrain ourselves from thinking that drilling (and mining) is an option, we'll have all the more incentive to do something else - the substantive, long-lasting changes we are going to make now to ensure a better future. It'll be easier and cheaper to do it now than to wait until we have a real crisis.

We are addicted, not only to oil, but to cheap fossil fuels in general. The only place we can get by drilling is to dig ourselves in deeper. In an earlier post about gasoline prices, referring to a local Republican candidate that believes drilling will solve our problems, I said: The candidate's position is short sighted at best, and delusional at worst. But, hey, what can you expect from an addict.... To an addict, there can never be enough. Addicts, when it comes to their next fix, aren't rational about it, where it comes from, how they'll get it, or what it'll cost. One doesn't treat an addiction by looking for the next fix; that only makes the withdrawal that much the worse when the stash runs out. The only way to treat the addiction is to reduce the dependence on the substance.... Instead of dickering over where we can get another million barrels a day, we should be seeking out where we can find a replacement for that million barrels.

If Palin was really so in favor of "all of the above" when it comes to energy, why hasn't she advocated doing more of the above in Alaska? Certainly, with all their oil wealth, now would be a good time to start diversifying their energy portfolio. It is ironic that, although they have access to more oil than they need, Alaskans pay a whole lot more than most for a gallon of gasoline. Where we live, we've recently dropped down to about $2.20. In Anchorage, it's still $3.30. Communities further inland face even higher prices. On the North Slope, where all that crude oil is found, the cost is astronomical. Alaska's problem is twofold: they lack refining capacity to turn that crude oil into gasoline and diesel (crude gets shipped down to the west coast or Asia, then shipped back as refined product), and Alaska's large size and sparse population make for very high transportation costs. Alaska should have long ago been looking for alternatives.

Certainly, Alaska should diversify their tax portfolio; some 85% of the state's budget comes from oil and gas taxes. The Alaskan government is so tied to oil that their tax division website has the daily commodity prices on it. Alaska has no sales tax, no income tax, and is aglut in enough oil wealth to be able to give it's citizens an annual dividend check from the Alaska Permanent Fund. The dividend is about $1000-1500 in most years, but over $3000 in 2008 due to the skyrocketing price of oil and a windfall profits tax enacted under Palin. (See politifact and the Alaska Legislative Digest for more on the Alaskan budget and oil taxes.) But just how permanent will that permanent fund be? Unfortunately, like seemingly all oil-rich places, their myopia cannot envision a future when that wealth is exhausted, and so have done little to plan for it.

Some more platitudes and rainbows, the requisite "God Bless America," and there we have it: the Barracuda's take on what energy policy should be for the next administration and, by extension, the next generation or two. For those of you who were keeping count, she devoted a lot of her time to natural gas, followed by drilling for more oil, followed by coal, followed by nuclear, sprinkled with a lot of talk about how the other guys are all wrong. There was a single paragraph into which she wrapped up everything else - alternatives and conservation. So, in essence, her big policy speech roughly matches the energy consumption of the US today: lots coal, followed by oil and natural gas, then nuclear, and a small amount of everything else, mixed with a whole lot of finger-pointing, and lip service paid to conservation. If that is Palin's idea of America's energy future, I'd say it looks a whole lot more like the past and present.

Pig + Lipstick = Pig

So why have I spent so much time excoriating this candidate and a policy speech that, basically, no one noticed? For one thing, I want to make it very clear: this woman doesn't have a clue. Perhaps it is a moot point, if McCain and Palin aren't elected. Then again, there are some who are already looking to her in 2012. Another reason I have gone on at great length is because, unlike many social and economic policies, there are is no shortage of hard facts and figures to substantiate arguments. It is also a subject that, by virtue of my education, I feel qualified to speak on. I don't need to appeal to common values or hypothesize about the future - it's all in the numbers!

Finally, I feel that this is an issue that is important enough that it requires real action from real leadership, and this just ain't it.

Overhead Projector

McCain, in his ongoing campaign against government earmarks - $18 billion a year out of a $3 trillion budget - cites Obama's support for a $3 million earmark for an overhead projector. What's up with that? Well, it comes down to what you want to call things, and whether you think funding public education in science is wasteful spending.

This is what you and I would call an overhead projector. Depending on the model, it runs a few hundred dollars.



What Obama requested was money for a new star projector for the Adler Planetarium - kinda like this one:

Image Credit: Peter Maher, Alumni Relations, Wits University

A star projector is a multi-million dollar, multi-ton piece of precision optics and mechanics, combined with sophistocated and powerful computer hardware and other electronics. It is the device responsible for putting stars, planets, constellations, and other objects on the dome of a planetarium. The stars aren't just thrown willy-nilly, either, they are a nearly-exact representation of the night sky as one would see it at any time of night or day, at any location on the Earth. It should come as no surprise that I spent a fair bit of time at my local planetarium when I was growing up. There are a few thousand in the U.S. The Adler Planetarium in Chicago was the first in the western hemisphere, and remains one of the best in the world.

The star projector they are looking to replace has been around for 40 years, and the whole request is part of a $10 million renovation that combines public and private money. Over half of the planetarium's visitors are from outside the state, so federal funding certainly seems warranted. Incidentally, the $3 million request wasn't passed, so the planetarium is still looking for money.

There are many others that have a lot to say on the subject. Here are some links:

The Adler Planetarium's own response (pdf).
Professor Astronomy blog
NPR Talk of the Nation Science Friday segment.
Discover Magazine Bad Astronomy Blog
Comment in the NYT from Professor of Astronomy Andrey Kravtsov.

Etymology of "Maverick"

As I have already opined, "maverick," like all political cliches, should be made into a profanity and outlawed. However, it is at least worth wondering where the word comes from, and what its original meaning is, compared to the meaning that McCain-Palin want it to mean and apply to themselves.

According to this article in the New York Times, here's the history:

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

Ok, so McCain wants to see himself as one without a brand. Fair enough. But, as it turns out, the Maverick family, in America since the 1600s, has had a fairly long association with liberal and progressive politics. From the article:

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.
...
Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.

Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas....“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

I added the hyperlinks. Just so I'm not cherrypicking, there aren't also a bunch of conservative Republican Mavericks in history, here's wikipedia's page on the term "maverick".

Thanks to Da for the tipoff on the article.

The Presidential Debate: A Drinking Game

Presidential debates are dull. Especially given that they are not really "debates" at all. So we decided to spice things up by making up our own drinking game.

90 minutes and a quarter of a bottle of scotch later, Alex is cursing John McCain. "My friends" caused him to finish his current Michel Couvreur (aged 12 years in Burgundean caves). I stuck to root beer, given that Brynna was sharing some of the drinking duties.

Our list of catchphrases:
For Obama: "middle class," "Main Street," and "the last 8 years."
For McCain: "maverick," "Obama does not understand" or "is naive," and "My friends."
The polling from the last debate seems to have knocked the "does not understand" thing out of the running. We realized partway through that we should have replaced it with "reference to working with Joe Lieberman as reaching across the aisle"—which simply IS NOT TRUE anymore!
For either candidate: "change"

We thought that some of the questions—prioritize your priorities, what sacrifices do we need to make, what don't you know and how will you learn it—were great questions but unfortunately went unanswered by either man.

Alex would also like to repeat his plea from the last debate: give the moderator the power to switch off the mike when the candidate goes over time.

Obama was a little more aggressive about defending himself this time, though that was in large part limited by the format. We think he won—especially given that this is supposed to be McCain's special format—though we are of course biased in this direction.

Brynna is much more alert and happy now that the debate is over. She and her Daddy are having a deep discussion right now about the neural pathways involved in shifting her weight from foot to foot, as she stands on Alex's lap and grins at him.

UPDATE 2008-10-08 1900: I'll also throw out this one other point - counterpoint, really. McCain asked who was the last President to raise taxes during an economic downturn? Humphrey. Well, actually that's not true, it's just a useful anecdote. More than that, I wish Obama had come back and asked: when was the last time we had massive tax cuts during a time of war?

Weekly Dose

A weekly infusion of our little Brynna bean:


I promise you there is actually a child in there, somewhere.


Brynna has this Dartmouth bunting that was given to us by good friends. It will be very cozy for Brynna in worse weather. Thankfully that will be sometime in the future, when she can better fill it out. For now, in the moderately cool weather of early autumn, with Brynna not more than two months old, it is still very cozy, but downright comical in its over-size. The tall pinnacle of a hood will continue to be funny. It reminds me Maggie's snowsuit in The Simpsons:



Brynna at nine weeks. I promise that we will not refer to her age in weeks forever (I'll tear up when, at 1140 weeks, she graduates from college). For right now, it's still the most convenient unit. Besides, we've got these really cool signs - why not use them?


Brynna takes the election very seriously. She likes to catch up on her reading while taking in some tummy-time.

The Debate

It would take hours, a few thousand words, and a complete transcript of the whole 100-minute teeth-pulling episode to say all we have to say about the debate. So, instead, let's throw out a couple of comments for the masses:

In response to Lehrer's question about the lessons learned in Iraq, the correct answer is not how right McCain was about the counter-insurgency. The right answer - first, foremost, before, after, and ever since the time of Sun Tsu - is "Never get into a war in the first place." Obama sorta came 'round to that, but really that is all he needed to say: the best way to win a war is not fight one in the first place. For crying out loud, just watch the Princess Bride.



"Maverick" should, like oh-so-many political cliches, be officially declared a four-letter word.



The road to the White House does not lead through bracelets from war mothers. If you think anyone's vote can be won in a contest of who has the best sob stories, I would very much ike to vomit all over you.



I suppose it is well that Obama's game is basketball. It is clear, from the number of leads from McCain that he could have knocked out of the park with a single sentence, that baseball will never be his game. In response to every instance where McCain touted his long experience in foreign policy as evidence that he's all set to make the decisions for the next four years, all Obama needed to say was "How much use is experience if you keep making bad decisions?"



If McCain thinks it's all so great that he's going to not need any on-the-job training to be commander-in-chief, what the hell does he think of his running mate?

I appreciated that this debate had some time for back and forth, rather than being merely a joint press conference. However, let this be a lesson for the future: the moderator must always be empowered with a switch to cut the mike of either or both candidate.

The sentiment in this room is that, far more than either candidate's performance, the debate itself failed to meet expectations.

OBaby

We wanted to be able to show Brynna that she was around for a big historical moment. Here we are watching Obama's acceptance speech at the DNC last week:

The Great Minnesota Get-Together

On Sunday we headed off to the State Fair. Its main claim to fame is that just about any sort of food is available on a stick.

We started off the day with a yummy brunch at the French Meadow bakery:


Then made a brief stop at Twin Cities Green to pick up some more bamboo socks for Brynna:


And finally, on to the park and ride area for the fair. Here we are waiting for the bus:


Once we finally arrived at the fair, we met up with our friend Katie, a Minnesota native, and put ourselves in her capable hands to direct our wanderings. We started at the dairy barn, where Alex and I shared a blackberry malt made with Minnesota milk:


And checked out the butter sculptures of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way contestants, each one carefully carved from a 90-pound block of Minnesota butter:


Across the street was the horticulture building, with the prize veggies:


And giant pumpkins:


And pretty flowers:


There was also crop art, which is made with seeds and grains. We had no idea that crop artists trend Democratic, but there were many anti-Republican and pro-Obama pieces, including this Dr. Seuss-themed one (Thidwick the moose has an annoying elephant living on his head, and all of the little figures surrounding the main picture have little liberal signs):


And this George Bush/Pinocchio scarecrow:


We have no idea why this scarecrow is wearing a Dartmouth hat, but we back it:


Then we wandered across the fairgrounds...


Stopping to take a photo with the moose topiary:


And ended up at the Eco Experience building (that's a 120-foot wind turbine blade):


Brynna then decided it was time for dinner, so we all took advantage of the opportunity to have a bite to eat (us grown-ups had watermelon):


Later on it was sweet potato chips:


Also eaten at the fair by various members of our party:
-fried cheese on a stick
-non-fried cheese stick
-corn dog
-fried pickles
-falafel
-baklava
-strawberry lemonade
-Leinekugel's honey weiss (beer)

We passed up chocolate-covered bacon on a stick, chocolate-covered key lime pie on a stick, spaghetti on a stick, deep fried candy bars on sticks, and a variety of other fair delicacies.

We did, however, visit a bunch of the animal barns, checking out the dairy goats, poultry, horses, and cows.

Eventually, it was time to head home. Once back at the park and ride, Brynna went through a large meal and two diapers before we could buckle her in to her car seat and start the drive. All in all, she seemed to enjoy the festivities, which marked her one-month birthday!