This past Saturday afternoon, after doing my dance duty at the annual “Dancing in the Street” at Grand Center, across from Powell Symphony Hall, I wandered the booths of the adjacent “Green Homes and Renewable Energy Festival” going on in Grandel Square behind the stage. There were plenty of solar panels, windmills, composters, insulation plans, PAC’s, and so forth.

But what really impressed me was this oversize black surfboard-looking thing under an awning surrounded by young Christians. It was the second place winner of the North American Solar Challenge 2008: The Principia Solar Car.

I regularly see Principia College students who drive down from Elsah, IL to dance with us. But it was a pleasure to converse with the young engineers, craftspeople, and even marketing students who created and support this little marvel.

Each of the little GaAs solar cells costs over $30, and the body was hand made by sudents out of graphite mesh, resin, and structural honeycomb. Even the wheels were custom made. These younguns are every bit as dedicated as I remember from my college daze. [sic]

How can I spot them as Christian? Well, Principia is explicitly “A Liberal Arts College for Christian Scientists”. They might have some odd ideas about Life, the Universe, and Everything, but Gould’s principle of Nonoverlapping Magisteria seems to allow them a solid education outside of that realm.

And How to Build a Solar Car is not their title for these galleries of building the car, but it should be.

A new book is in press, and will be released in a month. The author of the BadAstronomy blog, Phil Plait has written “Death From the Skies: These Are the Ways the World Will End!” That’s him, exhibiting typical Ivory Tower Professorial reserve as he eyes his pre-release copy (click him to read his reaction).

For a hint about what’s in it, his post about the recently seen most distant object gives a clue. In brief, observatories have seen and confirmed a Population I supernova 12.8 billion light years away/ago. This is the oldest object ever observed, and it again confirms theories about how galaxies form.

So what? Well, imagine a flash of gamma rays that we can see from that far away. If it had happened anywhere in our own galaxy, then it would have been bright enough to totally sterilize our planet in 24 hours. All the way through the crust! We’re talking gamma rays, not happy sunshine. There are many interlocking observations to explain how we know this. Here’s Nasa’a take.

The good news is that this scale of stellar event is first-generation (Population I). We are living in a second generation galaxy in a third generation neighborhood. (Wiki about Stellar Populations) But there are other types of events that can produce similar radiation hazards to us if they happen in our galaxy. I presume that if you read the book, you’ll see for yourself.

So the End Timers like Sarah Palin could be partially right. If one can bodily rise up to heaven after being vaporized by gamma rays. Biblical catastrophes are nothing compared to what astronomers have discovered in the last half century actually goes on out there. It is possible that one or more of the not-yet-explained mass extinctions on our planet was due to stellar radiation events. Perhaps a precessing quasar, a black hole forming, or some such event had happened within 5,000 light years, and life on Earth had to re-boot.

There are plenty of innumerate groups who think that the LHC will destroy the world, as they have with each generation of nuclear test device before. Loud groups with mailing lists and placards.

The Large Hadron Collider (in case you were unaware) is the Swiss upgrade to the unfinished Superconducting Super Collider that the U.S. half built in the 1990’s. A Hardon is basically an atomic nucleus. “Large” means up to the size of the lead (Pb) nucleus (mass of 207 amu’s each). The SSC was being built in Texas, but between cutting science funding and groups protesting its danger, Congress cut it.

They fired the LHC up this morning (3:30 EDT) just to spin some protons around at nearly the speed of light. Soon, they will be ready to actually cause a collision between 2 counter-rotating currents of these hadrons. Their best hope is to find the Higgs Boson, presumably the source of mass within quarks.

The detractors worst fear is that they will create a microscopic black hole that will swallow the Earth. Over at the BadAstronomy blog, he details why this is silly. In brief, the LHC isn’t big enough. Anything we can build on the planet wouldn’t be big enough. Note: The total energy density in the core of the Sun obviously isn’t big enough, or it would be a black hole.

But, then there is this bit of silliness: HasTheLargeHadronColliderDestroyedTheWorldYet.com. If you read the code behind the page, you find several programmer in-jokes. But there is also the comment:

if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn’t yet updated
please email mike@frantic.org to receive a full refund

Ya gets what yez pays for, I guess.

Then, there is this (The LHC Rap):

Perhaps Physicists rapping is the sign of the end times.

Lawrence Lessig tells it simply and straight: the past eight years have been horrible for Internet users in the  U.S.   Broadband access in the U.S. has dropped from #5 at the beginning of Bush’s term to #22 now.  In many countries, you will pay half of what Americans pay for ten times the speed.

John McCain, who has had a leadership position on the U.S. Committee on Science, Technology and Commerce has nothing to say about recognizing or remedying this problem.  We are becoming a third word power in Internet access and McCain doesn’t give a shit.

To make things worse, McCain (whose campaign is loaded up with telecom lobbyists) has now come out against net neutrality.

This short video is well-worth watching and highly disturbing.  Lawrence Lessig is a brilliant thinker who explains the issues clearly.  Consider sending his link to anyone who cares about the Internet and free speech.

The Onion is at it again, with this detailed account about an idiot who is planning to post an Internet comment.

I also enjoyed this Onion offering: Mob Not Angry At Monster, Just Disappointed.

I’m talking about an assault on the internet of Olympic proportions. Literally. The Olympics could possibly bring the internet infrastructure to its knees. Or not. Experts say 60% chance of no-problem, vs. 10% chance of total crisis. According to this discussion, the over 300 channels of live internet feed from the Beijing Olympic park might be a problem.

Do you remember when Victoria’s Secret did that one hour, one channel live web broadcast and the internet couldn’t keep up? This “amateur” competition will have up to 112 simultaneous broadcasts, at three different resolutions each to cover the range of events and languages. Then there are over 400,000,000 internet viewers between just the U.S. and China. Unlike cable, satellite, or over-the-air broadcasts, the internet essentially needs a channel per viewer.

So, this multi-billion dollar amateur event will be the biggest stress test of the internet ever proposed.

I wrote about complacency once before. I focused on the complacency of most Americans in the face of the energy crisis that is clearly upon us. We have no assurance that gasoline won’t double or triple in price over the next five or 10 years, throwing our economy into a massive depression. With stakes like these, you would think that prolific energy wasters like us would immediately jump on our energy consumption problem by enacting a national conservation plan to cut our petroleum use in half. This could be accomplished by modifying our wasteful energy usage in dozens of ways. For instance, we really could carpool. We could build up our mass transit systems and encourage their use. We could walk and bike more. We could make our homes much more energy-efficient. Instead of building new homes in existing farm fields, we could renovate homes that already exist. While we’re at it, we could cut our use of all other forms of energy in half too. For instance, the technology already exists to make zero-carbon footprint buildings.

Others have written extensively regarding many methods by which we could reduce energy use. Due to the widely accepted law of supply and demand, cutting our use of energy would also have the effect of lowering the price of energy (relative to whatever it would have been had we not taken such measures), thereby diminishing the financial damage from our perennial trade deficits and budget deficits.

My concern is that so many people (including many people I know personally) are absolutely complacent about the need to change the way we produce and use energy. I keep hearing people say that “they will make our gasoline out of corn” or “we have plenty of coal” as though some unspecified “corn plan” would produce net energy without causing people to starve or some fantasy “coal plan” could be a foolproof substitute for petroleum, without somehow contributing massive amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

People are finally buying more energy-efficient cars, but that is only in response to the spiking costs of gasoline. It’s like we need to be kicked in the shin in order to get our attention. Many mainstream news articles discuss that this price jump of gasoline occurred “suddenly,” as though it was impossible to see that high gasoline prices were in our future. We still don’t get it, though. For example, many news articles are currently talking about the high price of gas as though gas will continue to be five dollars per gallon five years from now, as though we’ve hit a stable plateau.

As I suggested in my prior post about complacency, I sense that there’s a rampant attitude that most of the big things in life are not under our control. Rather, they simply “happen.” According to many people, the “free market” decides what will be available for sale and at what price it will be sold. Similarly, “God” makes decisions about disasters and diseases such as heart attacks and lung cancer (even though people cause many of their own problems through climate change in lifestyle at choices). The people who are big believers in the free market and a sentient God see humans as powerless children who simply react to situations. We act like there’s nothing we can do to root corporate corruption out of our national political system.

From so many people, I hear this solution: “They” will come up with something to solve our energy problems, our medical problems, our food production problems, our natural resource supply issues and our pollution problems, as though these problems don’t start with each and every one of us. As though we are not responsible for what “they” need to do. As though we don’t make the messes that “they” need to clean up.

I have no doubt that we could cut our energy usage in half. We could substantially reduce our risks of certain diseases by changing our lifestyles. We could eat foods that are friendlier to the planet, such that the average item of food would not actually need to travel 1000 miles or more to our plates. We could start making difficult decisions that would ensure sustainable supplies of water well into the future, at least for many communities (Las Vegas might not be in the plans). By using much less of everything we consume we could substantially cut the amount of toxic waste we generate. When “we” live more responsibly, “they” have less work to do to save us.

Admittedly, some bad things do seem to just happen to us. On the other hand, many of our biggest problems are caused by us. Therefore, to act complacently as a general rule is a huge cop-out virtually guaranteeing disaster. The real solution is to force ourselves to follow the chain of production through our use of our products and resources so that we can see that our local actions often have tangible national and global consequences. We are incapable of assessing these big problems to the extent that we allow ourselves to overlook problems that have solutions that would be expensive or inconvenient to us.

Sacrifice is a dirty word these days. No politician wants to tell the citizens that we will need to give up some of our wasteful ways. The same thing goes for the many “greenwashing” articles out there. For instance, I read several “green” magazines, including Plenty; they are extremely light on the need for self-sacrifice. (more…)

About some things, Americans are incredibly stupid. For instance, I’ve kept an eye on science and religion related ignorance for years. 15% of Americans don’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun. Half of the people in the United States (an allegedly “Christian Nation”)  can’t name Genesis as the first book in the Bible.

There are a lot more statistics where those came from. If you’d like to read a few dozen zingers, read Rick Shenkman’s article in Alternet, “Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?” There are some real head-shakers in Shenkman’s article. Several might have you wondering whether we should require citizens to pass rudimentary intelligence tests in order to vote. Shenkman’s compilation of stupidity had me wondering this. I know that this is an extremely controversial idea based on the way it has been misused in the past. It is clear, though that huge numbers of people have no idea how their government is designed to work, who is running their government, the basic characteristics of the scientific method, the basic facts of the religions to which they cling, or rudimentary principles of geography, history or economics. Now really . . . should such a person vote? This question makes me squirm.

I’m not really suggesting that we should take official government action to keep people from voting based on their intelligence levels. On the other hand, reading Shenkman’s article makes me wonder whether our “Get out the vote” campaigns should be focused on getting people to vote only if they know something other than their favorite TV shows and sports stars. Rather than “get out the vote,” perhaps we should have “vote only if you’re informed” campaigns. Here’s one of Shenkman’s many statistics that especially got me thinking in this entirely unacceptable way:

In the election of 2004, one of the hot issues was gay marriage. But gauging public opinion on the subject was difficult. Asked in one national poll whether they supported a constitutional amendment allowing only marriages between a man and a woman, a majority said yes. But three questions later a majority also agreed that “defining marriage was not an important enough issue to be worth changing the Constitution.” The New York Times wryly summed up the results: Americans clearly favor amending the Constitution but not changing it.

What is stupidity? Early in his comprehensive article on the lack of comprehension, Shenkman designates the five types of stupidity:

First, is sheer ignorance: Ignorance of critical facts about important events in the news, and ignorance of how our government functions and who’s in charge. Second, is negligence: The disinclination to seek reliable sources of information about important news events. Third, is wooden-headedness, as the historian Barbara Tuchman defined it: The inclination to believe what we want to believe regardless of the facts. Fourth, is shortsightedness: The support of public policies that are mutually contradictory, or contrary to the country’s long-term interests. Fifth, and finally, is a broad category I call bone-headedness, for want of a better name: The susceptibility to meaningless phrases, stereotypes, irrational biases, and simplistic diagnoses and solutions that play on our hopes and fears.

Although the article at the top of this post, “Ignorant America,” is full of compelling statistics, it (like many articles documenting American stupidity) is also riddled with many questions that confuse trivia for knowledge. How important is it for most Americans to know the name of the Secretary of Defense? Isn’t it possible that someone can be rather up to speed about America’s military policies without actually knowing the name of the Secretary of Defense?

America is obsessed with trivia and it is not unusual for trivia to masquerade as something important for tests that purport to measure intelligence. Knowing lots and lots of facts, though, especially the inert facts common for trivia buffs, is not the same thing as being intelligent. If these two things (knowledge and facts) were equal, we would regularly have great insights and discoveries occurring as a result of Trivia Nights, yet I don’t believe that has yet happened even once.

The problem with many intelligence tests is that they only measure ability to recall bits of information rather than detecting true understanding, much less wisdom. For this reason, many of the questions used to illustrate how “stupid” we are resemble the same problems found in many formal “intelligence tests.” A thorough review of those problems with IQ tests can be found in Stephen Jay Gould’s Mismeasure of Man (1996).

I recognize that we all have our focus when it comes to understanding the world. Someone who is dedicated to one field of study might not know as much about other fields of study. It is also important to remember that all of us have huge gaps in information. If we have dedicated our lives to understanding nanotechnology, how much are we actually going to know about the history of classical music ? If you work as a professional athlete, should we really be expected to know all five of the specific legal rights granted by the First Amendment? (Did you know that one of those rights is the right to petition the government?). Having written this, I think it’s more likely that those who truly excel at a field tend to be rather well-rounded.

There’s probably more than a few people who would insist that the scientific method is the be-all and end-all of intelligence because of its insistence on proof. There is an uneasy truce between belief and proof, however. In the area of religion, belief is often said to be justified even in the absence of proof. But don’t forget that even very smart people find an irresistible urge to believe many things that they cannot prove.

Here’s another caveat for those who walk around wagging their fingers (like I do) at the large number of “stupid” Americans. Howard Gardner has put forth a strong argument that there were actually multiple intelligences. He holds that the concept of “general intelligence” is highly suspect and that there might not be such a thing as GI. There are those who are incredibly talented at reading the moods and motives of other people (he calls this interpersonal intelligence), but who don’t do well at mathematics. There are people who are terrifically talented in musical ways (e.g. Hillary Hahn), but might not be very good at biology (I’m not suggesting that Hillary on is not good at biology– because I am deeply infatuated with Hillary Hahn, I assume that she is excellent at everything she does!). Many of us do know some “absent-minded professors” who can talk for hours on esoterica such as Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative but who seem inept at coping in the real world on a day-to-day basis. In the category of super-intelligent, I would quickly place my plumber (who can talk knowledgeably about almost anything, it seems) and a carpenter who has done work at my house, who has a superhuman grasp of his profession. I can’t imagine being as good as he is at the many arts of transforming a house, even if I trained for 20 years at the foremost “carpenter school.” (more…)

In 2006, Norman Solomon wrote War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. His book detailed the information tactics the American government uses to launch wars.

War Made Easy has been such an influential book that it has now been made into a movie of the same name. You can view it here or you can order a copy of the DVD here.

I was able to attend a viewing of “War Made Easy” last Saturday night at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis (NCMR2008). This crisply edited movie was narrated by Sean Penn. Much of what keeps this movie engaging are the dozens of carefully chosen news media clips generated during various American wars for the past 50 years, including large numbers of videos clips from the Vietnam war and the Iraq occupation. The magic of “War Made Easy” is that the directors carefully edited and arranged these clips to show us that nothing much has really changed: If an American president has decided that he wants to go to war, the watchdog American media is likely to become a lapdog and we will inevitably go to war.

Following the screening of “War Made Easy,” I attended a discussion of the movie led by media critic Norman Solomon and the co-director and producer of the movie, Loretta Alper. The following morning, Ms. Alper granted me the opportunity to interview her further regarding the making of “War Made Easy.”

Whenever we Americans go to war, we get there through a well-documented series of stages. As I watched “War Made Easy,” I saw better than ever that these stages are entirely predictable in the context of America’s warmongering ways.

Perhaps this characterization of America sounds too shrill, but just look around. The evidence is everywhere that war is a sport in America just as sports are warlike. Our TV shows and movies overflow with violence as a first-rate method of dealing with conflict. The toys we foist on our boys extol violence as the most obvious way of settling disputes. We challenge each other with statements like “support the troops,” no matter what those troops are doing (and see here ). We are all too ready to invoke the word “war,” because that word triggers a ready-made conceptual frame for freely and guiltlessly expressing ourselves with bullets, bombs and blood. In America, this frame of war is such an incredibly effective filter that we proceed to consider only the “benefits” of war and we ignore the massive damages inflicted on both war-zone civilians and upon millions of Americans (and see here).

For most Americans, it is difficult to see that we are truly a nation of warmongers. After all, we are so absolutely used to being the way we are that even the most obvious things have become difficult to see. As George Orwell once noted, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

Before seeing “War Made Easy,” I was already familiar with the FAIR study documenting the manner in which our media rolled over rather than risk being accused of being unpatriotic. How much does the media roll over? So much so, that Americans see only an extremely filtered set of images representing the war. We see pictures of happy soldiers shipping out to “do their duty.” Pictures of dismembered civilian children are much too inconvenient for American patriotism, however.

Yes, Americans have become warriors looking for wars. America is a place where the thinnest of excuses will get the whole war machine revved. It is one of the points made by “War Made Easy” that America is gasoline needing only a small spark of an excuse to get us exploding off to war. Almost any excuse will do, it seems, and it doesn’t matter whether that excuse entirely false. In the 1960s, all it would took was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an incident which never actually happened at all (based upon a recently declassified NSA document and other evidence). Nonetheless, the claim of the Gulf of Tonkin incident opened the floodgates to the American military buildup in Vietnam.

In 1993, all it took was a few well-placed public officials to stir up worries about “weapons of mass destruction” that didn’t exist. At that point, the confirmation bias and the herd instinct take over. How warped has our national perspective become? Whatever any perceived outsider does, we will see in the worst possible light and we will make damned sure that every other American becomes equally xenophobic. When this level of dysfunction occurs in an individual, we call that individual mentally ill. When it occurs nationwide, we call it “patriotism.”

The above observations are necessary prelude to my understanding of “War Made Easy.” I needed to consider these issues because of a question I had trouble getting past: Why isn’t going to war easy for most countries other than the United States? One obvious answer is that most other countries have not invested in a massive military infrastructure. The U.S. is physically able go to war at the push of a button, while most other would first require a long-term military buildup. The next obvious question, though, is why most other countries have not invested in their military might to the same extent as the United States. My unfortunate conclusion is that the U.S. has a warmonger mentality. When the President of the U.S. says we need to go to war, the citizens are already half-primed to agree. This would not be the case with, for example, the Prime Minister of Norway.

“War Made Easy” is an illustration of the predictable steps that will occur as soon as the spark of a false threat hits the gasoline of American militaristic exceptionalism. We see this same pattern over and over. Here are some of the predictable steps that occur when an American president presses for war. All of these are well substantiated by “War Made Easy.”

I. Public dialogue becomes simplistic. Consider Pat Buchanan’s warning that “When the war begins, the debate ends.” The media clips offered by “War Made Easy” substantiate the claim that once war is under way, there is no more media coverage for the rationale for the war, but only for the progress of the war. Once war is under way, it is produced like a TV show. The information from the war zone is tightly controlled by the government. The media does not protest this tight control, because it desperately craves the access and the market share. Therefore, whatever labels the government gives to a battle or a war (e.g., “Shock and Awe”), the media readily embraces it.

II. The President’s case for war is always built upon deception; the official story is false or it omits numerous key facts. Instead, the case is made primarily upon spin.

III. Americans are portrayed as “reluctant fighters.” We’d rather not go to war, but circumstances are allegedly forcing our hand. (more…)

An enthusiastic conservation effort, coupled with a wide variety of alternative sources of energy, will soften the blow of peak oil, but it might be too little too late.   And it’s incredibly difficult to get people to actually do something serious about conserving energy (see Janisse Ray’s “Altar Call for True Believers” at Orion Magazine).  In my experience, most people don’t give a damn about our long-term energy situation, not even many of the people who preach that hard times might be right around the corner.

Many Americans refuse to consider serious conservation.  It feels like surrender to them.  It’s wimpy and shameful.  I understand this emotion, but if we want to keep using wasteful amounts of energy, we’ll have to find it somewhere.  Many people suggest coal.  Coal is dirty and dangerously toxic, in addition to being a fossil fuel that drives global warning.  We have limited options for generating levels of energy that we’re currently generating.

What other energy source exists in ample supply?  Did someone say “nuclear power”?  We’re seeing more and more people look to nuclear because there is really no where else to go (given that we’re not willing to wean ourselves of the extravagant use of energy).

Here are two viewpoints on the nuclear issue.  The first is from Rebecca Solnit’s article in Orion Magazine, entitled “Reasons Not to Glow.”

[E]very stage of the nuclear fuel cycle is murderously filthy, imparting long-lasting contamination on an epic scale; that a certain degree of radioactive pollution is standard at each of these stages, but the accidents are now so many in number that they have to be factored in as part of the environmental cost; that the plants themselves generate lots of radioactive waste, which we still don’t know what to do with—because the stuff is deadly . . . anywhere . . . and almost forever.

Solnit was reacting to a position now held by James Lovelock, the former anti-nuclear power advocate.  Lovelock’s conversion (and the conversions of other prominent environmentalists) is reported by Gwyneth Cravens, published in Discover Magazine, in an article entitled, “Is Nuclear Energy our Best Hope?” Here’s an excerpt:

Lovelock explained that his decision to endorse nuclear power was motivated by his fear of the consequences of global warming and by reports of increasing fossil-fuel emissions that drive the warming. Jesse Ausubel, head of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, recently echoed Lovelock’s sentiment. “As a green, I care intensely about land-sparing, about leaving land for nature,” he wrote. “To reach the scale at which they would contribute importantly to meeting global energy demand, renewable sources of energy such as wind, water, and biomass cause serious environmental harm. Measuring renewables in watts per square meter, nuclear has astronomical advantages over its competitors.” All of this has led several other prominent environmentalists to publicly favor new nuclear plants.

I don’t want no god on my lawn
Just a flower I can help along
‘Cause the soul of no body knows
how a flower grows… Oh how a flower grows . . .

“Longer Boats,” by Cat Stevens (now known as Yusuf Islam).

Why are so many religious people uncomfortable with so many scientists? I can think of several reasons.

According to many Believers, scientists are arrogant know-it-alls. Believers see scientists as emotionally sterile lab-dwellers who flaunt their white coats and their fancy lab equipment.

Scientists exacerbate the situation by speaking and writing using esoteric language that makes science-phobes feel ignorant. By using such difficult concepts and language, scientists have raised the bar, which excludes many folks from joining scientific discussions.

It’s not like the “good old days,” where people were generally informed enough to join many conversations regarding science (or social science). Things are different now. Those who want to join a discussion regarding evolution, stem cells, or cosmology (to take a few examples) would be well-advised to first spend at least a week in the library reading several reputable books on these topics. This is a far greater time commitment than it takes to go to church. It’s a lot easier to accuse scientists of being “elitist” or to hurl Bible quotes than it is to take the time to responsibly prepare so that one can meaningfully participate in scientific discussions. Those who put their trust in their church leaders on matters of science are often not willing to make such an investment, however. They prefer the opinions of non-scientist preachers over those of real-life scientists. In doing this, they engage in religionism (see definition #3 here).

Making matters worse for Believers, scientists and other intellectuals have had the audacity to disprove a steady stream of religious claims. The Earth is obviously older than 6,000 years. The Shroud of Turin is a fake. The clumps of 60 cells we call blastocysts are biologically incapable of thinking or feeling (despite claims of “souls”), and not all of the words of the Bible are authentic. The list goes on and on. Almost every time scientists focus their methods on religious claims (the ones that are amenable to testing, anyway), those religious claims tend to crumble. Methodical and rigorous evidence-based analyses keep making fools of religious folks, especially literalist Believers.

It makes it even more painful for Believers that most world-class scientists have no patience with religion and they are getting more vocal about it every day. A new wave of books, including Daniel Dennett’s 2007 effort, “Breaking the Spell” rallies the troops of scientists to put religion itself under the microscope.

In the minds of Believers, the scientists have no plans to stop until they have completely destroyed everything that is sacred or moral. Look at all of the damage that they’ve already done by promoting the works of Darwin, who has A) “demoted” humans to the level of animals; B) promoted the idea that nature’s great function and beauty randomly happened; and C) made a formidable argument that nothing is truly immoral anymore because there is no longer any need for God.

Worse yet, Believers can plainly see that the scientific establishment has gained command of magic that really works (as opposed to religious magic). Those damned scientists have figured out how to build airplanes that really fly and they’ve designed diagnostic tests that really show why a person is sick. Contrast these undeniable accomplishments to the track record of Believers: prayers that don’t really heal, predictions of the end of the world that fail and promises of heaven that have absolutely no basis in fact.

That’s how many (though certainly not all) Believers see the situation. Many religious faithful are thus become motivated by what Nietzsche termed ressentiment: the transfer of the pain that accompanies feelings of inferiority onto an external scapegoat, coupled with an urge for vengeance against those who are noble.

But it gets even worse for Believers. What gripes them more than anything else is that so many scientists act like they know it ALL when they don’t really know it all. They don’t really know that there is no heaven! They can’t disprove that I talk with God in my prayers! They weren’t there when the universe was created. So why are they so certain that they are right where scientific facts collide with religious factual claims?

To many religious folks, scientists constantly threaten social traditions in an arrogant and ignorant way. Therefore, many members of conservative religions don’t merely disagree with scientists on particular issues. No, they disparage all of science (except the science that helps them disparage science, such as the science that allows them to possess those marvelous computers on which they rant about “arrogant” scientists). When this level of frustration festers, it can even culminate in the election of a President who gains immense support when he, himself, disparages science.

If the above descriptions are even half-true, no wonder scientists are the targets of so much animosity these days!

Is there anything we can do about this sad state of affairs? Perhaps there is. It would involve a reframing of what it means to be a scientist. It has to do with publicly recognizing serious limitations of science. It involves a recognition that science is a “sacred” endeavor.

I have just finished reading a provocative new article by Stuart Kauffman: “Breaking the Galilean Spell.” Kauffman is a professor of biological sciences, physics and astronomy. He is actively involved at the Santa Fe Institute and he is the author of a book on complexity that inspired me: At Home in the Universe: the Search for the Laws of Self Organization (1995). Kauffman’s writings are both rigorous and poetic.

I sense that Kauffman feels the rampant distrust that many people have regarding scientists. Although Kauffman doesn’t mention the fever-pitched ressentiment felt by many Believers, I suspect that this ressentiment motivated Kauffman to write “Breaking the Galilean Spell.” (more…)

I have been anticipating the FCC switch from analog to digital for several years. The original plan was to have the final demise of NTSC (”analog”) broadcast in 2006. Now, it will really happen. The change that they averted when they went to color is finally here. Everyone needs a new TV.

Unless you have cable or satellite. Then you can wait until your old box dies. But I use rabbit ears in my multipath hell of a location in the city. On good days, I can get 7 channels of regular interest, plus 4 explicitly Christian channels (24, 26, 49, 51. The 700 Club shares 11). Sometimes I cannot get ABC-30 or CW-11 clear enough to record or avoid watering eyes. Other times Fox-2 and My-46 are too bad to watch, too. So I really only have 3 reliable channels in analog.

Enter digital clarity. Yesterday I got my gummint subsidized converter box and hooked it up. Now I get perfectly clear (in numerical order) Fox-2.1, CBS-4.1, NBC-5.1, local weather 5.2, and PBS 9.1-9.4. That’s it.

(more…)

The best way to get people to neglect a cause is to dedicate a Special Day to that cause each year. On that one special Day, we will hold thousands festivals where we treat the cause in a trite way and we will ignore that cause the other 364 days. We’re just too busy with our amusements and distractions to give a damn about important things here in America. Earth Day fits the mold perfectly. You would think that at Earth Day festivals, people would take the purpose of Earth Day seriously. You’d think that people would feel the need to make substantial immediate changes in their lives in order to live and procreate in healthy and sustainable ways, leaving the planet in good shape for the following generations of humans and the other animals. What could be done on Earth Day? We could talk big. We could make real plans to take the actions suggested by visionaries like Lester Brown, who proposes that we cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2020. It could really be done. Here’s how Brown describes his plan in his book, Plan B 3.0:

First, dramatically and systematically raise the efficiency of the world energy economy; second, massive investment in renewable sources of energy; and third, increase the earth’s tree cover by planting billions of trees.

Really doing something on a big scale could “inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth’s environment.” But most people aren’t doing anything at all. They are content to live the same wasteful lives people lived 20 years ago.

I discussed Earth Day with several people recently (in stores, not at the Earth Day festival). They rolled their eyes when I suggested the need to actually change the way we live our lives. They think that Earth Day is run by a bunch of hippies and they don’t trust hippies.

Even those who don’t scoff at the idea of Earth Day mostly believe in belief in Earth Day (just like most religious believers, who often believe in belief). Many Earth Day’ers believe it’s sufficient to merely say and think responsible things, even if the way they live their lives are indistinguishable from those who don’t believe in Earth Day. Many of these people celebrating Earth Day drive to Earth Day festivities in SUV’s from their homes way out in the Suburbs. When they’re done shopping at Earth Day (and there are lots of non-essential things to buy at Earth Day), they drive back out to the suburbs. This inaction reminds me of a neighbor who mentioned a topic to which I responded “That really concerns me.” He immediately chastised me: “No it doesn’t. If you were actually concerned, you’d be doing something about it.” (more…)

In the April 3, 2008 addition of Nature (available online only to subscribers), an article entitled “Architects of a Low-Energy Future” indicates that we can do a much better job in building energy-efficient structures.  This opportunity is critically important (as discussed in an earlier post regarding architect Ed Mazria of the highly accomplished non-profit Architecture 2030) because buildings worldwide account for approximately 45% of total energy consumption, more than “all the world’s cars and trucks put together.”

How much better can we design buildings?

The most efficient of the structures are almost completely passive, meaning they require very little, if any, traditional heating or air conditioning.  Yet the overall comfort they provide is, if anything, superior to existing buildings.  Nor is there necessarily a cost penalty: these ultra-energy-efficient buildings are often no more expensive to build than conventional structures, and they work out far cheaper if energy bills during their occupation are taken into account.

The hurdles to building these energy-efficient structures do not involve engineering challenges or lack of materials.  The major impediments to developing energy efficiency in buildings can be found in “our institutional barriers and market failures rather than technical problems.”

Another big problem is that high energy efficiency is too often not on the client’s radar, and architects are geared to simply giving the clients only what the client wants.  This is a shame, as the article points out, because “the biggest payoffs will come from new buildings, where ultralow energy can be designed in from the beginning.”  If it is not designed in from the beginning, the work of trying to make the building energy-efficient is much more difficult.  Retrofitting generally has to rely upon “bolting on energy intensive air conditioning, heating, and artificial lighting.”

Reading this article, I was astounded by how much energy a good building design can save.  Take, for instance, heating and cooling.  Most people pour lots of energy into their heating and air-conditioning systems.  It was eye-opening to learn that most of this cost is not necessary.  With high efficiency installation, glazing, and “thermal bridges” to prevent wasteful energy transfers to the outside, high-efficiency buildings show their “impressive gains in negawatts.”

The building can get its heating from the solar gains through glazing as well as through waste heat from appliances and even our bodies.

Another key technique for temperature control and passive houses is that first counterintuitive: simply let fresh air and from the outside.  A pump draws fresh air through a grid of pipes several meters underground, where the temperature is relatively constant throughout the year, 10-14 degrees centigrade . . .  When this fresh air arrives at the house, its temperature has already been modulated–warmed up or cool down by the ground, depending on the season . . . this system of air base cooling and ventilation not only saves energy by recycling heat, but vastly improves air quality.

Jeff Christian is the head of buildings technology Center at the Oak Ridge national laboratory.  His job is to design cheap and energy-efficient homes for low income families.  He is convinced that “cheap, low energy houses will take off in United States only if the government steps in:  “The financial incentives we need to drive this are not in place.”

Getting highly efficient buildings actually built sounds like another place where the invisible hand needs a hand.

Check out this current website from Tylenol.   You’ll see that McNeil (maker of Tylenol) has heroically and voluntarily removed all of these medicines from the market:

Concentrated TYLENOL® Infants’ Drops Plus Cold
Concentrated TYLENOL® Infants’ Drops Plus Cold & Cough
PediaCare® Infant Dropper Decongestant
PediaCare® Infant Dropper Long-Acting Cough
PediaCare® Infant Drops Decongestant (containing pseudoephedrine)
PediaCare® Infant Dropper Decongestant & Cough
PediaCare® Infant Drops Decongestant & Cough (containing pseudoephedrine)

Why remove all these children’s medicines?  According to Tylenol, it’s because:

[W]e have become aware of rare instances of misuse leading to accidental overdose, especially in children under the age of two. Therefore, we are voluntarily withdrawing [these] concentrated cough and cold medicines from the market.

Really? Does the manufacturer of Tylenol really believe that it is removing these drugs only because consumers are misusing Tylenol products?  Or could it be something else, perhaps this relatively recent and damning press release by a reputable group of pediatricians:

Cold and cough medicines given to infants and toddlers work no better than dummy pills and can be dangerous, pediatricians seeking to curb their use told government health advisers Thursday.

The doctors told the Food and Drug Administration advisers that the over-the-counter medicines shouldn’t be given to children younger than 6 because they don’t help them and aren’t safe. Such a prohibition would go beyond last week’s drug industry move to eliminate sales of the nonprescription drugs targeted at children under 2.

The group petitioned the FDA seeking in part a government statement saying the medications shouldn’t be used in older children as well. The expert advisers began a two-day meeting to consider the issue. The FDA has yet to act, in part pending a recommendation expected late Friday from the joint panel of outside experts in pediatrics and nonprescription drugs, said the agency’s Dr. Joel Schiffenbauer.

The medicines have been marketed for use in children for decades, with drug companies spending $50 million a year on heart-tugging ads in parenting magazines and elsewhere. Still, it has long been acknowledged there is little or no data from studies in the very young to show the medicines are safe and work. Worse, some studies suggest the medicines are no better than dummy pills in treating cold and cough symptoms in young children, the petitioners said.

“When a treatment is ineffective, its risks — if not zero — always will exceed its benefits,” said Dr. Michael Shannon, a Children’s Hospital Boston pediatrician and Harvard Medical School professor who was another of the petitioners.

It’s quite amazing that the drug companies might be selling chemicals that don’t really do what the drug manufacturers say they do.  It’s most amazing because it happens so incredibly often.  

What do I mean?  Consider the recent news regarding the scam regarding Prozac and other modern antidepressants.   And remember Vioxx, the “miracle” drug that created 100,000 widows and widowers?   Not only are some of these drugs dangerous; another aspect of the scam is that many of these medical “miracles” don’t function any better than placebos for many patients.  

But back to Tylenol.  This isn’t the first time Tylenol has been caught scamming the public.  If you Google “acetaminophen” and “liver,” you’ll see hundreds of sites that talk about the danger of taking a too much Tylenol (which might surprise you, given the common belief that there is considerable tolerance built into the product and given the existence of Extra-Strength Tylenol).  Follow this link to see that the makers of Tylenol have fought hard, at least since 1977, to keep the public from knowing that overdoses of Tylenol can cause liver failure.  

How else would you explain that the FDA and the pharmaceutical makers delayed giving liver failure warnings for decades?  Since 2003, Tylenol has carried a liver toxicity warning, but it makes you wonder how many lives it cost when it delayed giving that warning.  It cost more lives when consumers use the cup that comes with Children’s Tylenol (see above photo) with the concentrated formulas of cough and cold concoctions (now discontinued) that should be administered with a dropper. You see, the discontinued formulas had higher concentrations of acetaminopen.  A parent mistakenly using the little plastic cup (that comes with children’s Tylenol)  instead of the dropper (that came with the (now-discontinued infant formulas) could destroy childen’s livers.  According to the manufacturer, it’s the consumer’s faut, even though swapping the cup for the dropper was entirely foreseeable.  But now, the maker of Tylenol can blame the consumers for the need to take these products off the market rather than admit (because the pediatricians were correct) that these products didn’t really work.

Aside from the risk of liver toxicity (which exists only when the consumer more than the recommended dose of Tylenol), isn’t Tylenol an important and effective way to reduce your child’s fever?  Is fever always a bad thing?

Mass marketing has programmed parents to fear all fevers and to feel a deep need to prove their dedication to their children by pouring bright red chemicals into their children’s mouths at the first sign of fever. 

I have a different understanding of fever than most American consumers.   I believe that Tylenol’s multi-billion dollar budget (more money is spent per year on Tylenol than on Coca-Cola) is geared to making people needlessly anxious about fevers.   A low grade fever is not always dangerous.   In fact, it is rarely dangerous. Here are some guidelines as to when to treat a child’s fever.  

The maker of Tylenol (and those who manufacture other fever-reducing products) have successfully convinced the public that something absolutely must be done to bring down all fevers in young children.  Is that good medical advice?  Usually not.  The pediatrician treating my children made it clear to my wife and me that even a fever that spikes up to 106 is not a problem in a young child as long as that child is hydrating (drinking fluids and peeing regularly).   At some point, of course a sustained fever should give a parent concern.  But a few days of 102 or 103 is usually nothing to be worried about—unless you watch a lot of television commercials that tell you that you MUST get that fever down by pouring those bright red chemicals into your child’s body (chemicals that are potentially harmful to your child’s liver). 

Here’s one other thing to consider.  (more…)

I was reading this ZDNet blog about the Browser becoming the new Desktop, and one question came to mind. What happened to the promise of inter-operable parts of your computer environment?

About 15 years back, when computers were going to create the paperless office, all of the operating system and desktop teams were promising this glowing future when you could mix and match components seamlessly. You can have one spell checker, one email program, one internet interface, one text editor, one math interface (as for spreadsheet formulas), and so on. But they didn’t have to be from the same source! WordPerfect would work with 1-2-3 would work with Usenet (email), and their respective parts could be called up by your schedule program. This didn’t come to be.

Now, for example, you have one spell checker for each brand of each component. Microsoft did follow the Lotus model, and integrated text, spreadsheets, and email so that they share a spell checker. But there is no way to use the Microsoft spell checker from (for example) your web design program (unless you do buy it from MS). Nor can you use it from your browser, even if you are still shackled to IE. Sure, FireFox comes with spell checking, but you have to train it for your special needs from scratch.

It would be nice if I only had to remember one set of special formula commands that do the same things in several different programs, too.

But sadly, this promise faded away, possibly buried under the tons of paper records that office computers now generate for (as near as I can tell) strictly CYA reasons.

Japan’s Kaguya lunar orbiter is sending back some incredible photos, including this photo of an earthrise.

Here are many other photos (click the HDTV tab).  Here’s a post (by NASA) discussing the lunar missions of Japan and China.

As usual my head is abuzz with the social media explosion and the impact technology has on my world. While communication has always been a part of the technology, folks that barely own computers are becoming familiar with Linkedin, Facebook, myspace, and twitter.  iPhones are being advertised so deliciously on television ads that my lust can barely be contained, not to mention the tiniest of notebook computers making an appearance with the cutest of jingles. Sometimes I am not sure If what I am doing makes sense for my business. Sometimes I worry that I waste my time with my focus on all this geeky technology and social media web 2.0 stuff.

I am no expert, but as usual I know enough to be dangerous, and to provide a lively conduit to my less technologically focused comrades. A less kind way of saying that is that I am obsessed with technology and communication but that I have people in my life who keep me from completely disappearing into the matrix. I love social connections technology provides, and I have for as long as I can remember. I went from devouring Asimov and Heinlein as a child and dreaming about connections within world to almost going broke networking coffeehouses with chat and email and online information in St. Louis prior to the web explosion.

One of the reasons I ventured out on my own in recruiting is that I could experiment with stuff like this and the stuff that is still being developed. I have had a lot of success with the social media in recruiting, and love the heck out of it. There is truly a dizzying amount of activity, and it promises to be a wild ride as we venture even more into interactivity and robust network applications. It can be a distraction, but I have found that as long as my online activities drive me back to the telephone (or my bottom line) I am okay. It is hard to focus and be that disciplined with all the fun, crazy stuff happening out there, but recruiting success (like most of life) really is about discipline and focus. I know I have to stay balanced, and a tool like twitter is very dangerous for us folks easily distracted by shiny bits, but it is also a way to find people, and that is what I do for a living. I guess it is always all about the results, and I should just let those decide if my geeky methods are helpful or harmful.

I believe that life is always enhanced by connection, which is partly why I love being a recruiter. And though I know that a lot of folks scoff at meaningful connections through a computer or a mobile device, for me it goes without saying that the lines between the virtual world and that of my own back yard are now so blurred as to be almost indistinguishable. I have had countless virtual world interactions that changed my life, made me money, or led me to find new friends or business contacts, so there is no debate on the value to me. The challenge for me lies in finding a balance. The dizzying real time feeds of email, tweets, chat and mobile blogging are as necessary to me as my morning cup of joe, but I have to work to find a way to stay grounded, centered and balanced in my approach, otherwise I might go crazy. So I am working on it. I think it is funny that I try to do 20 minutes of sitting meditation each morning, and then I go off to work, but it does seem to help me keep my balance.

Recruiting efficiently has a lot to do with doing effective research. That is why I think my methods might be interesting to people that are not just recruiters. Here is an example of how I use twitter. Think of it as a constant explosion of 140 character thoughts into space. Steams of consciousness from an unidentified number of consciousnesses. Random thoughts, pointers to pictures and articles and interviews and what someone had for dinner. Dizzying, right? You can follow people and see, in real-time, their streams on your screen. Entertaining, fun, pretty pointless though, right? Wrong.

Enter tweet scan, a real-time twitter search. For example, I will search for St. Louis tweets, and what do we find? An ever growing and surprisingly active list of folks using twitter here in my home town. Coolio! I am seeing denizens of the web that I never realized were there. But wait, what is that? Oh, a tweet from someone I might know, who knew that guy was on twitter. Man I need to get back in touch with that guy, uh, wait, holy cow. He is tweeting that he is hiring people, and is having problems. He needs me!

Uh, sorry guys, I gotta run. Right there is some potential business popping its head up and, as a rhino, I need to charge right after it. But isn’t it amazing how such a seemingly pointless tool can help you do what you need to do?  Or at least it can if you know how to use it.