The Influence Machine. (defunct)

I was wrong.

2008-02-10T17:16:00.001-05:00

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Though I had concluded that I had no time for writing, I've discovered that this assessment was simply wrong. To remedy this error, I've assembled some kindred spirits- bloggers who value writing based upon reason and passion- to explore some of the issues I pursued with you, the reader, here on The Influence Machine.
Please join us as we embark on a new project, Blue Island Almanack.

Hello, I must be going

2007-09-17T13:05:00.000-04:00

The blog world seems to be falling apart, perhaps devoured by The Nothing from The Neverending Story. I read others repeating this sentiment, and I see it manifest in the storied former Blogs of Note that go without updates for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Alas, the departed will shortly be joined by The Influence Machine.
Sadly, I can nolonger make time for this blog. I’m stretched thin with a renewed job-hunt, grad school, serving on my city’s environmental commission, volunteering for community groups, and come March, raising my first child. I'm "a bit of butter, spread over too much bread," as it were.
To those who have read and especially to those who have commented, you’ve made this experience rewarding. You’ve educated me about a great deal. I hope I’ve done a little of the same for you. I plan to keep reading others' blogs, though I may or may not keep using the name "E.R. Dunhill" when I comment. Perhaps ERD will be back in the future.
I encourage everyone to keep reading, keep writing (whether that's anything to do with blogs, or not), and keep an open mind.

On certainty

2007-09-10T08:38:00.000-04:00

Some questions to the reader:
Can science prove human causation of global climate change? If so why are we still arguing about it? If not, is there any scenario in which we can accept some degree of scientific uncertainty? Has the bulk of scientific opinion been wrong before? If so, does this make science unreliable? Is it somehow foolish or ethically wrong to accept benefits from science without question, but shun science’s warnings?

Rudbeckia hirta

2007-09-09T20:01:00.000-04:00

Black-eyed Susan (R. hirta)
General Botanical Characteristics: Black-eyed Susan is a native, warm-season, annual, biennial or short-lived perennial forb. It has one to a few stems 12 to 40 inches (0.3-1.0 m) tall, which are erect and sometimes sparingly branched. The lower leaves are 2 to 6 inches (5-15 cm) long, alternate and petioled. The upper leaves are mostly sessile. The inflorescences are few to many flower heads on peduncles 2 to 8 inches (5-20 cm) long. The fruit is an achene 0.06 inches (1.5 mm) long; there is no pappus. Black-eyed Susan has a taproot or a cluster of fibrous roots. It is a mycorrhizal species.
Sometimes flower stalks will appear in the first summer, but typically black-eyed Susan blooms from June to September of the second year. After flowering and seed maturation, the plants die. The seed is very small (1,746,000 per pound) and black, about 2 mm long and 0.5 mm in diameter.
Adaptation and Distribution: Black-eyed Susan is naturalized in most of the states east of Kansas and the bordering areas of Canada. It is adapted throughout the Northeast on soils with a drainage classification range from well-drained to somewhat poorly drained. It will perform acceptably on droughty soils during years with average or above rainfall, but best growth is achieved on sandy, well drained sites. It is winter hardy in areas where low temperatures are between -30 ° and -20 °F.
Uses: Erosion control: Black-eyed Susan is an important component in critical area treatment plantings along with grasses, legumes, and other forbs when used along road cuts, hillsides, and other areas subject to erosion.
Wildlife: This plant offers protection and food to several song and game birds.

Sources and further reading:
USDA
USDA Forest Service
University of Maryland, College Park (image source)

On the value and onus of education

2007-09-06T12:31:00.000-04:00

Some questions to the reader:
What is the value of education? Is it economic? Social? Spiritual? Something else? Is there worth in studying something that has no commercial or career value? Do people have a responsibility to be educated? Does the state have a responsibility to ensure that people are educated? Does education have to come from a school?

Thanks to Sociological Stew for a recent post that inspired these questions

Il silenzio

2007-09-06T08:31:00.000-04:00

The world has lost an artistic treasure. Luciano Pavarotti, icon of 20th century opera, passed away today at the age of 71.
For my own part (and with Puccini’s dated stereotypes aside), I think Pavarotti’s performances of Turadot with Joan Sutherland are among the greatest music ever recorded. The tenor’s power and grace made the genre of opera once again approachable. He will be missed.

Image source: University of Texas

Seeds

2007-09-04T12:32:00.000-04:00

I spent a good bit of my Labor Day weekend walking my dogs around a couple of large parks in suburban Maryland. There, I spotted a small army of flowering dogwoods (Cornus florida), several black walnuts (Juglans nigra), and stand after stand of trees that my untrained eye cannot identify past “oak” (Quercus consult-the-field-guide). I spent time in the butterfly garden above a clear lake that provides drinking water to thousands, and woods that seem too wild to be 10 miles from DC.
In a few weeks, there will be a group of geography students gathered at one of these parks to collect seeds from the places that mowers would otherwise cut them down. Those indigenous seeds will be handed-over to a partnership of nonprofits and state agencies to be sprouted and ultimately planted around the watershed. The new trees will grow to produce clean water, create food and habitat for wildlife, and build the biological bank of indigenous plants.
Collecting seeds will serve as a great opportunity to work directly toward a sustainable community, while providing a venue to address the concept of sustainability more broadly. Students will get their hands dirty and learn something in the process. These opportunities exist in every community, and it’s not necessary to be a scientist, an entrepreneur, or an activist to make lasting, positive changes. Sometimes, all it takes is gathering seeds to plant them where they might grow.

Image: Portrait of Shitao Supervising the Planting of Pine Trees: after Zhu Henian's Copy of Shitao's Self-portrait; Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

On carrying capacity

2007-08-28T08:43:00.000-04:00

Some questions to the reader:
How many humans do you think the Earth can support? Can the current population size be supported forever, given our current resource demands? Can the current population size be supported forever, if all (or most) humans adopt an industrialized lifestyle? If the population must stop growing or shrink, whose responsibility is it to make sure that happens? Is anyone capable of wielding that authority over someone else? How should they ensure that it happens?

Corylus americana

2007-08-27T12:32:00.000-04:00

American hazel (C. americana)
Form: Small shrub, often in clumps reaching 12 feet in height.
Fruit: Edible brown nuts (1/2 inch diameter) enclosed in a hairy, leaf-like husk with ragged edges; initially green, ripening to a brown in late summer.
Leaf: Alternate, simple, with a doubly serrated margin, broadly oval with a heart-shaped or rounded base, dark green above and paler below, 2 1/2 to 5 inches in length, petiole with stiff, glandular hairs.
Flower: Monoecious; males are light brown catkins (1 to 3 inch long) in clusters of two or three near branch tips, opening before leaves; females are inconspicuous with only bright red stigma and styles protruding from the otherwise gray-brown buds, appearing as short, thin, red threads, early spring.
Bark: Light grayish brown and smooth, later develops a mild criss-cross netted pattern.

Sources and further reading:
Virginia Tech dendrology factsheet
Hazelnut recipes
University of Wisconsin plants database (image source)

And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost

2007-08-23T12:20:00.000-04:00

There was a time when parents, aunts, grandfathers, and the occasional sage taught the little ones the names, habits, uses, and character of every discernable living thing. We learned with wide eyes that coyote is unpredictable, a trickster; that the river horse will kill without hesitation when defending her calf; and how much hemlock can safely be given as a sedative. Then, we turned around and handed this knowledge with personal amendment to the next generation. We were nodes in a massively parallel, massively redundant living database.
After a few generations of moving into towns and cities, and a couple of generations of just being too busy, we’ve fractured the system. We no longer recognize that it is a bad sign that Flavoparmelia caperata no longer paints many trees. We are blind to the fact that the Bay once ran clear, because of all of its oysters, and because of stands of chestnuts a hundred miles away. We have done no wrong but have simply lost this understanding.
We have become so ignorant of these things, that we often dismiss them as primitive, trivial, useless. But this intimate knowledge of living things and natural systems is valuable. Many species can serve as the proverbial canary in the coalmine, their ill-health alerting us to potentially serious problems. Others can offer insight into how people live and work. What COO wouldn’t want her company to reuse waste products as effectively as a healthy desert ecosystem? Japanese companies have used process analogies, including natural analogies, to improve manufacturing and R&D efforts for years.
While there’s no substitute for experiencing wildlife firsthand, whether that’s living out of a pack for a few days in a national park, or exploring one’s own neighborhood, there are other ways to start relearning this old knowledge. Field guides* offer answers to the basic “What is that called?” and “How does it live?” questions. Check one out from your local library. The National Museum of Natural History also offers a great website (including a very hip GIS-based tool) that covers many of these questions for North American mammals.
This is the world we live in. Learn it.

*E.R. Dunhill is partial to Peterson’s field guides for biological groupings (Fishes, Mammals, &c.) and Audubon’s field guides for geographical groupings (Field Guide to the Mid-Atlantic States, &c.)

On accountability and pollution

2007-08-20T08:33:00.000-04:00

Some questions to the reader:
Should individuals and corporations be held accountable for the pollution they produce? Does accountability apply equally to pollution on private and public land? Should polluters be allowed to pay a fee to pollute more? If so, who should be paid? If not, how should pollution be controlled? Who should get to decide what counts as a pollutant, and how much is acceptable?

Echinacea purpurea

2007-08-17T08:32:00.000-04:00

Purple Coneflower (E. purpurea)
Height: 2-3 feet
Germination: 15-30 days
Optimum soil temperature for germination: 70F-75F
Sowing depth: 1/8"
Blooming period: June-October
Suggested use: Borders, meadows, mixtures, floral gardens.
Uses, Cautions, and Preparation: The aboveground parts of the plant and roots of echinacea are used fresh or dried to make teas, squeezed (expressed) juice, extracts, or preparations for external use.
Echinacea has traditionally been used to treat or prevent colds, flu, and other infections. Echinacea is believed to stimulate the immune system to help fight infections. Less commonly, echinacea has been used for wounds and skin problems, such as acne or boils.
Studies indicate that echinacea does not appear to prevent colds or other infections. Other studies have shown that echinacea may be beneficial in treating upper respiratory infections.
When taken by mouth, echinacea usually does not cause side effects. However, some people experience allergic reactions, including rashes, increased asthma, and anaphylaxis (a life-threatening allergic reaction). In clinical trials, gastrointestinal side effects were most common. It is important to consult your health care providers about any herb or dietary you are using, including echinacea. This helps to ensure safe and coordinated care.
Miscellaneous: E. purpurea is indigenous to the SE and Midwestern United States. An excellent variety for cut flower arrangements with a vase life of 5 to 7 days. Propagation from root cuttings is reliable if performed in the fall.

Sources and further reading:
Texas A&M University
National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine
Missouri State University (image source)

Continuum

2007-08-14T12:02:00.000-04:00

I’ve written quite a bit in the last few weeks about waning resources, changing values, and current and potential problems. The common threads among many of these discussions have been ethics, economy, and environment. I see these lines of inquiry as inseparable.
Having devoted much effort to challenges and questions, I’d like to focus briefly on solutions and answers. I believe that the only solution that will address ethics, economy, and environment with due weight is that of sustainability. For readers who are unfamiliar with this concept, sustainability seeks to create systems that can continue ostensibly forever. Such systems find a balance between inputs and outputs, resources and waste. These systems often rely on efficiency and repurposing waste products. This idea is not new; many human cultures have lived in sustainable equilibrium with their surroundings, making use of their environment without disrupting it. Many modern avenues of sustainability advocate lifeways that are far more similar to what you and I understand than to traditional sustainable lifeways.
I should qualify this by making it clear that I see sustainability as an ideal that people should approach through continuous improvement. Anyone, regardless of the magnitude of their ecological footprint, regardless of convictions about ethics or the economy, can move toward a more sustainable lifeway. For many people, such changes will save time and money.
One could write a book on sustainability (and many have), but there are some core concepts that have some hope of fitting in this space. To achieve a sustainable world, I see the central shifts in thinking and practice as awareness, an evolution of values, the realization of common wealth, and mass-localization/community development. There are plenty of outcomes and caveats that are worthy of discussion, but this is a place to start:

Awareness: The first and possibly the most important step is for the public to understand our economy, our lifeway, and how these bear upon the natural world. This does not mean that everyone needs to drop what they’re doing and go earn a PhD in ecology or natural resource economics. Instead, we need to follow in a grand human tradition of genuinely understanding how we make a living, and teaching this knowledge to our children.
The initial pieces of this puzzle, as I see them, are to understand where your food and energy come from; “the grocery store” and “the light switch” are insufficient answers to these questions.
It’s very important to understand your household’s relationship with water. How much do you consume? Where does it come from? Where does it go when it goes down the drain, or runs down the end of the driveway? Who else and what else uses it?
Likewise, it’s important to understand what happens when you throw something away. Where does it go? What happens to it physically?
These pathways of understanding lead to the critical question, “Is there a better way?”

Evolution of values: We must realize the inherent worth of the other members of our human family. We all need to take steps to eliminate poverty and injustice. It is commendable to volunteer one’s time and resources for such causes, but it would be better still if we obviated the need for such reactions by adopting a lifeway that mitigates or eliminates them.
We must also recognize the value of nonhuman species and natural systems. If we choose not to honor these with innate worth, we must at least recognize that they are of enduring value to humans. Natural systems provide water to drink and the air that supports us and the crops we need for food, clothing, shelter, and energy. Disrupting these systems is short-sighted. Similarly, we have no idea what plants and animals may one day be of practical use to us. Preserving biodiversity is a tangible investment in our own future.
Recent research has again demonstrated that money does not buy happiness. Having enough to live comfortably, having friends, family, a community, and a purpose bring happiness.

Realization of common wealth: Many countries (and other political divisions, like states, parishes, provinces, prefectures, counties, cantons, cities, &c.) own useful resources, like forests, minerals, and waterways. These publicly held resources belong to the citizens of those various places, and their use should directly benefit the citizenry. For instance, if a corporation wants to cut timber in a state forest, rather than the process existing as a giveaway of public resources to the timber company, the company would have to compensate the citizens for the right to log. This money could be distributed to the citizens in a model similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund, or could be held in trust and provided to citizens as money for healthcare expenses, college tuition, and other broadly useful endeavors.
With some level of organization, globally held resources, like the atmosphere, or Antarctica’s existing and future resources could provide benefit to some universal human fund. This would realize a democratic stream of wealth for everyone and recognize each person’s ownership of public goods.

Mass-localization and community development: We need to produce energy and goods more efficiently. Rather than mining coal in Ohio, shipping it to a power plant in Maryland, burning it to create heat to generate electricity, transmitting that electricity over miles of cable back in the same direction the coal traveled from, and using that electricity to heat a coil in a hot water heater, we need to focus on generating and managing energy in situ. Energy is used in mining and transporting the coal. Energy is wasted in converting the chemical energy in the coal into heat, into mechanical energy, into electrical energy, and back into heat. Instead we could generate both electricity and heat for hot water on our own roofs. Likewise, office buildings and shopping centers could be covered in photovoltaic cells and produce electricity for a profit. Why shouldn’t a sprawling shopping mall be covered in wind mills?
We must strive to save resources by growing more of our own food, by shopping in local businesses, and using commonly held resources, like libraries and parks.
We need to invest our time and interest in the institutions of community. Participating in local government, engaging in neighborhood and local school/college events, and actively joining a community of faith cultivate values and strengthen your community.

A sustainable lifeway may be a long way off, perhaps generations. Or maybe we can realize such a vision in our own lifetimes. Either way, each person has the potential and the power to begin moving in this direction.

Heavier things

2007-08-10T08:35:00.000-04:00

There is a finite amount of petroleum in the world. Much of this oil, possibly half of it, is locked-up in the ground in such a way that there will not be a cheap way to extract it in the foreseeable future. The US Geological Survey and the Energy Information Administration conducted a study, described in a 2004 EIA report, to assess and forecast world petroleum supply and demand. The study found that there is likely something like 3 trillion barrels of recoverable oil in the world. This sounds like a very big number- indeed it is a huge number- except when compared to the rate at which oil is consumed. The study further concluded that global oil production may well peak in 30 years, and fall-off sharply, so that humans are unable to produce petroleum at current levels within about 40 years.
Again, this study predicts that oil production will likely peak around 2037 and then decline, sharply. Obviously, other capacity studies abound. Some of them are more urgent, some of them are less so. The USGS / EIA study purports to be impartial and was completed in consultation with geologists and economists from both the US government and from the petroleum industry. Regardless of when the reader may personally believe oil will run out, the fact remains that there is a limited amount of oil in the world, and humans are using huge quantities every day.

Given that petroleum is the basis of our present economy, and perhaps more so the basis of an American lifeway, this resource-sunset is a mandate for deep change. The current administration previously asserted "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."
It's time to move beyond myopathy and greed and step into reality. This generation faces a problem, and like it or not, it's ours to fix. Many will ignore the problem. However, the rational solution- the one that will work in the real world- is to work toward sustainable lifeways and a sustainable economy. This means understanding where our energy, food, and other resources come from, and recognizing that financial costs are not the only costs we need to consider. This means making better choices, starting today.

Room for squares

2007-08-09T09:08:00.000-04:00

The Congress is moving ahead with a federal budget that would reverse the Bush administration's recent history of cutting funding for research in science and engineering. This money will ensure a place for many scientists and engineers in both the federal government and academia, and provide them with the resources they need to work.
The sciences should not be treated as extraneous trivia. They improve human health, investigate the causes and implications of climate change, and create new sources of energy, while extending those we already have. The application of science into various technologies forms the basis for much of our modern economy. Moreover, these disciplines are uniquely suited to exploring a sustainable way of life.
As the President threatens to veto any spending bill that exceeds his request, make your voice heard: Learn more and blog. Talk to friends and family. Contact your Representative and your Senators and let them know that you value this investment.

On finite resources and poverty

2007-08-06T12:31:00.000-04:00

Over the last couple of weeks, as I was plowing through journal articles, CRS reports, and endless data from the EIA and others, I started asking readers to share their thoughts on ethics, the environment, and the war in Iraq. Readers posted many thoughtful comments, and the lurkers (who are always welcome to comment) were out in force to follow these discussions. There was such a positive reaction, that I thought I'd bring up a few more points for discussion, and may begin to include such questions as a regular feature on The Influence Machine. I'll be more timely and thorough in my responses.

Can an economy (the global economy, regional economies, local economies) grow forever? Can infinite value be derived from finite resources? Does one country's (or individual’s, or group’s) increasing wealth necessarily mean that another becomes poorer? Can existing markets or regulatory environments (global, national, regional, &c) solve the problem of poverty? If so, should they? What would an end to poverty look like?

An inconvenient truth about biofuels

2007-08-02T12:02:00.000-04:00

In 2005, the US consumed about 140,407,470,000 gallons of gasoline. On average, that’s around 1.25 gallons of gasoline per day, for each man, woman, and child in the country. We use it without realizing it: the oranges we buy in February traveled a very long distance; all of those cheap clothes are only inexpensive because they were produced somewhere far enough away to have a tiny cost of labor; and of course we love to drive ourselves to work, dash to the supermarket to grab this, then later to the hardware store for that, all the while complaining about traffic and gas prices.
W has laudably suggested reducing gasoline consumption by 20% by 2017. Business interests are encouraging people to "Go Yellow". And Chevrolet is greenwashing a fleet of gas-guzzlers under the pretense that buying a flex-fuel car is in and of itself good for the environment.
Unfortunately, domestic corn-based ethanol and soybean or WVO biodiesel do not now offer, nor are they likely to offer in the foreseeable future, a tenable solution to the problem of transportation fuels. While it's true that production of biofuels has accelerated rapidly in recent years, there simply isn't enough feedstock to replace a meaningful fraction of petrofuels. Replacing the rough equivalent of 2% of the gasoline we use currently requires about 20% of our corn crop. If we stopped eating corn and feeding it to livestock- mildly absurd hypothetical actions- we'd still only cover about 10% of our current gasoline demand. Cellulosic ethanol fuel does nothing for us now, and there's no telling how long it will be until economically feasible methods of production are available. Moreover, there are a host of concerns over the cultivation of large amounts of switchgrass and genetically-modified fast-growing trees.
Research remains important; horizon technologies have a way of becoming household words in the blink of an eye. Likewise, incrementally greater production of biofuels does achieve some benefit, although it would make more sense to exploit some of the other benefits of biofuels. Rather than spreading a very thin mix of blended fuels around a large region, we should use high biofuel blends for special applications: biofuels for school buses to reduce the exposure of children to particulate pollution; biofuels for government fleet-vehicles and buses in Clean Air Act nonattainment areas; biofuels for watercraft to minimize sulfur, particulate, and synthetic-volatile pollution in waterways.
Given the finite lifespan of oil and the lack of a meaningful or reliable supply of a direct replacement, we have to consider conservation in a new way. We need to rethink communities, values, and lifeways. We need to act on this new thinking.
It grows dim in our national memory, but a little over six decades ago, a generation of Americans fought and won a massive war, and in so doing reinvented their economy and that of the world. Why can't ending a myopic addiction to oil and creating a sustainable economy be this generation's legacy?

Blog-o-mat: Continuing continuing service

2007-07-30T07:33:00.000-04:00

To the reader,
I'm pleased and impressed by the responses I've read to previous questions. I'm glad to see such heart-felt and articulate comments. Since I'm still up to my eyeballs in journal articles and CRS reports, I'll throw out a few more questions on ethics and environment:

Do we have any responsibility for the well-being of future generations of humans? Is such a responsibility dependent upon whether or not we have children of our own? Do we have any responsibility for the well-being of non-human species? Does the aesthetic quality of nature have any tangible value? Does the spiritual or metaphysical quality of nature have such value? Who or what should get to determine what those values are?

Blog-o-mat: Continuing service

2007-07-27T08:48:00.000-04:00

Another series of questions to the reader:

Does religion (or a particular religion, perhaps your own) mandate service to other people? How about people outside the faith? Does protecting or improving the natural environment honor such an ethic? Does knowingly harming the environment violate that ethic?

Introducing the Blog-o-mat: Some questions for the reader

2007-07-26T08:59:00.000-04:00

As I near the end of an engaging but tough course on environmental law and policy, I’ve regrettably let the weeds grow up around The Influence Machine. Rather than yet another post of accidental art or what amounts to a "Will return in…" sign, I’ll turn intellectual control of the blog over to the reader for a while. I am well-aware that this is analogous to when banks got rid of most of their tellers, installed ATMs, but still charged everyone the same fees (or more) for self-service. To the reader, whether well-read and opinionated or casual and curious, I pose these questions and ask for comment:

Can the United States win the war in Iraq? If so, how do you define victory? How do you think the US can achieve that? What happens to the Iraqis and the region if the US withraws in the immediate future?

The term-paper continues...

2007-07-25T11:57:00.000-04:00

Apollo 11 flight plan, 38 years after

2007-07-20T12:45:00.000-04:00

Term-paper cynicism, or a Thoreauvian aside

2007-07-18T16:30:00.000-04:00

As I dig through Congressional Research Service briefs, I hear Thoreau in the back of my mind:
"No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufactures and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation."

All this useless beauty

2007-07-13T13:27:00.000-04:00

Prague is not so much a city full of art as one expansive, living work. Cobbled streets wind through a thicket of old shops and homes with terra cotta roofs, and places of worship so ancient that they almost defy understanding- here a synagogue from the 12th century, there a basilica from the 10th. Tycho Brahe lies interred in one grand church, Wenceslas in another. Art has so long been the way of life in this city in Bohemia, that it becomes immediately obvious why the word "bohemian" has come to be affixed to creative types. It's hard to return from my week there without some remnant of that gothic and baroque drama.
A former student of astronomy and a former professional cartographer, I was most enamored of the Pražský Orloj, the Prague Astronomical Clock, in the Old Town plaza. This device measures time of day, the positions of the sun and moon, dawn and dusk, time of year, and other quantities useful to astronomy and astrology, all using clockwork and kindred technologies characteristic of the middle of the last millennium. It displays several pieces of moving sculpture that ring bells and deliver blessings on the hour. The clock embodies Pirsig's ideas of both classical and romantic beauty.
Praguers seem to appreciate all of this art and its (and their own) relationship with the natural world. So far north, the city enjoys and suffers the fickle economy of long summer days and unrelenting winter nights. Tucked so far from the sea and so close to mountains and hills, weather is even more protean. Owing to this physiography, Praguers seem to understand the value of every moment of sun and warm air; as soon as the clouds part, they are reading in public greens or having coffee or pilsner at sidewalk cafes. Conversely, clouds and rain mandate trips to museums and galleries and seem to tap the kegs that serve friends philosophizing in cellar pubs.
"What shall we do, what shall we do..."

If you've never stared off in the distance

2007-07-03T09:30:00.000-04:00

The hounds and I hike five miles and in this travel run across a fawn, hiding among the ferns. We find a good quarter-acre of wild blueberry, though there is not a ripe berry to be found.
The mountain is a living thing, its trees, its lichens, its millipedes breathing in and out. Loose stones and water relaxing toward the Potomac speak on its behalf. The sound of my own voice, reciting Flavoparmelia caperata and Punctelia rudecta for the benefit of the dogs’ education, seems trivial for a moment, but in the end I see is no less a part of the mountain. I consider for a moment that both "psyche" and "chi" come from words that mean breath.
I ruminate on Emerson:
"These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most requests is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs."
In the next few days, make some time for walking, for woodland pools, spring holes and ditches, for the solace of open spaces.

Clouded

2007-07-02T09:23:00.001-04:00

It's been overcast the last couple of nights, a fact that has me thinking about the night sky, rather than looking at it. The people have been on my mind more than the numbers, the tall-tale factoids, and the Weird Terrain.
I recall those who set about modeling the sky: Newton with his audacious claim and his big letter G; Einstein with his hip trick for the orbit of Mercury; Kepler and all of those ellipses, spheres, and cubes. I remember my freshman year heroes: Oort, Kuiper, Carolyn Shoemaker, and Hyakutake (that lucky cat).
This lineage of thinkers finally drifts past Copernicus and pauses at Galileo. I see in the life and legacy of Galileo Galilei a parallel with present debates about the origins of the world we know. Galileo was branded a heretic for his assertion that the Earth orbits the Sun, a fact that the Church disputed based solely upon their interpretation of religious writings.
People should believe as they will- many traditions of belief hold insight. (For my own part, I find Christianity, Western science, and Taoism to be particularly apt.) Moreover, we should engage in a meaningful dialogue over differences in our paradigms and should avoid mindless dogma. Belief should remain sincere.
I see an unfortunate trend among my friends and family who choose a literal interpretation of the creation story in the Abrahamic faiths. There is a pattern of extrapolating pararational dissent over the sciences that speak of evolution to those sciences that discuss climate change. Indeed there are relationships between these trains of thought, though there are similar linkages to the sciences that find fossil fuels and the sciences that develop new drugs and biologics. Leading a selective theological assault only against those scientific conclusions that are socially or politically unpalatable lacks sincerity in practice.
Perhaps more theologically important, I fear this debate undermines the core values of some of the world’s most populous and influential religions. Just as a literal interpretation of biblical cosmology against Galileo’s (and Copernicus’) conclusions continues to detract from the relevance of Christian thought, so too does the debate over origins, and more urgently, the antagonism toward climate science. This hostility erodes an opportunity to improve peoples' lives.
More than three centuries after the Church condemned Galileo for suggesting that the Earth did indeed orbit the Sun, and more than two decades after humans walked on the surface of the Moon and saw this with their own eyes, Pope John Paul II, speaking for the Roman Catholic Church, observed:
"In the last century and at the beginning of our own, advances in the historical sciences made it possible to acquire a new understanding of the Bible and of the biblical world. The rationalist context in which these data were most often presented seemed to make them dangerous to the Christian faith. Certain people, in their concern to defend the faith, thought it necessary to reject firmly-based historical conclusions. That was a hasty and unhappy decision...It is a duty for theologians to keep themselves regularly informed of scientific advances in order to examine if such be necessary, whether or not there are reasons for taking them into account in their reflection or for introducing changes in their teaching.
"The error of the theologians of the time, when they maintained the centrality of the earth, was to think that our understanding of the physical world's structure was, in some way, imposed by the literal sense of Sacred Scripture..."
(A full transcript of the English translation of the Pope’s remarks is available here.)
Religion and the sciences are not inherently mutually antagonistic. Moreover, these two wisdom traditions complement one another: The scientific method does not explicitly contain an ethical framework. It asks questions like "can we do this?" but often fails to ask, "should we do this?" Contrarily, religion generally lacks systematic natural inquiry and technique. It handily foments discussion over the ethics of creating a vaccine, but offers little or no insight on how one might accomplish this.
The turf war solves no problems and succeeds only in creating hostility and dividing people. It also ignores what each of these systems of belief actually want: understanding and a better world.

"Each time, in the telling"

2007-06-29T13:17:00.000-04:00

Some school of cavefish follows a current
Winding through pools not black
But void
Water carrying chalk
Water mingled with roots long lost.
We are those swimmers
Insofar as cavefish have schools.

We are the crooked ten-minute colt
Shivering on darting knees
Treading grass
Treading loess
Falling among the steppe-seeking herd
Somewhere after they’d forgotten the way.

We are the builders of boxes
The binders of books
Erecting a spider web fortress
To cloister the thinking I
In the sober comedy that
it
is tame.

Deluded that other is other
That other might be expelled
We shoo it, shrieking
Sweep it away.
But we were lassooed before words
By a pair of snares
Wound around one another
And repeated a trillion times.

It's not academic

2007-06-27T12:01:00.001-04:00

I’ve heard a great deal of "so what?" about climate change, lately. Many people hear terms like "general circulation model", "albedo", and "aeronomy", and shrug their shoulders. Even as physical sciences go, these concepts can be fairly abstract. Moreover, we all remember hot days and cold days, and we’re fairly hard-pressed to remember how many of each we had last year. The reader can’t look out the window and "see" climate change.
Or can we? Climate drives a dizzying array of physical and biological processes. It’s impossible to overstate the relationship between climate, ecology, and adaptation. I’ll spare the reader my normal purple prose, and instead focus on this image.
This MODIS image published by NASA shows African dust blowing across the Atlantic Ocean, to be deposited in the Caribbean Sea. Higher temperatures yield more airborne African dust, and more energetic winds to carry it. This dust clouds the clear Caribbean waters, interferes with algae and coral, and has been linked to coral reef die-offs. The reef die-offs directly impact the livelihood of local fishermen.
I urge the reader to look past the sometimes confusing details of mathematics and science for a moment and focus on what scientists are actually concerned about: quality of life and livelihood across our human family. Is this not worth our time and consideration?

To lie down beneath this bowl of stars

2007-06-25T09:06:00.001-04:00

I begin clearing the dust from the barrel and start tracking-down where all of the eye-pieces and filters have landed since I moved. It’s the wrong time of year to be getting to it, what with the thick, damp air and the long days crowding the dark of night, but now is when I have time to work.

It seems so civilized, seen with the aid of those carefully aligned parabolic mirrors and various lenses. So much of what we know about it began not so long ago, when a few curious and intuitive souls began to use new mathematics to overturn centuries of Church rhetoric and eons of pagan tradition. What all of this number-crunching succeeded in doing, though, was to reveal that we had been right all along- we exist in the midst of a vast wilderness, a desert of absurd extremes that we now refer to as space.
When I watch for a few minutes the sky turning about Polaris, I am reminded of the fire drill I used a few weeks ago. I muse for a moment that perhaps the enterprising soul who first made the leap from fire plough to the more sophisticated and economical fire drill might have been inspired by that little light at the center of the spinning night sky. In this scenario, as in so many others involved with the lights overhead, understanding and a technology that is almost synonymous with civilization comes directly from a wild place.
What’s curious is that we increasingly build walls between the wild and the civil. We regard evidence of wildness in our surroundings and in ourselves as vulgar. Some of us have begun to notice the places where these walls are ragged and thin, and some of us are so appalled by what this means for the delusion of immaculate civilization, that we pretend not to see them.
The interfaces between the two are constantly moving and evolving, and though they are obscure and elusive, they are real: The civilized world runs on agriculture, a practice that exploits the wild light of our nearest star. Meanwhile, we industrious agrarians pick up certain plants and animals and diffuse them throughout most of the places people live, pushing out the uncivilized plants and animals.
To move ahead in the long-term, to achieve sustainability, we must understand and accept the relationship between the civil and the wild. As long as both exist, they impact, influence, and drive one another. I encourage the reader to create or find an opportunity to experience the wild, or to watch the interface of wild things and the civilized world: Leave the trail. Go fishing. Bake your own bread. Or, enjoy the plain and savage beauty of the stars.

Where the heart is

2007-06-19T08:44:00.000-04:00

When friends and family visit for the first time, the words "cute", "cozy", and "darling" are bandied about. They ultimately recall that the townhouse my wife and I sold in November had one more half-bathroom and a little more floor space. This creates a logical paradox and begs the question, "So why did you move?"
It's a blow against living to consume. I've watched friends and coworkers move further and further away from where they spend most of their time, because "Out there, you can afford more house." I find this equation faulty, as its only parameters are dollars and square feet. Moreover, this calculus is predicated on the conclusion that a bigger house is always a better house.
I first began to dissect the equation long before moving, using that management-student logic that so often gets lodged in my head. In developing cost estimates, time=money. Though, absent from the $/sq foot equation for choosing where to live were the hours spent in rush hour traffic. For my friends who didn't mind an hour and a half each way stuck in a slow-moving car, I stepped through some simplified arithmetic: 3 hrs/day * 5 days/week * 50 weeks/year * 1 day/24 hours = 31.25 days/year. Commuters who enjoy half that daily ride- not at all a bad commute in the DC area- spend two full weeks in their cars every year. I understand that gas is fairly expensive, too. Mrs. and I resigned ourselves to our fairly average DC-area commutes, but resolved that we couldn't move further away.
This back-of-the-envelope finance led me to think about opportunity costs: what do we pass-up with all of this A-to-B? This begged the question of efficiency: If the commuting is wasting certain resources (i.e., my life), is it possible that it is inherently wasteful? Are there other aspects of my life that are wasteful? Some of these questions emerged before the move, some after.
The dominoes fell down in lovely little rows and started to yield answers: If I live close enough to the train to walk to it each day, I won't need to waste time, money, and fuel driving to it, nor driving to the gym to run in place. If I live near the town center, I can walk there, too- there is poetic logic in walking to and from the places where I dine. If I replace my vintage windows with high-efficiency windows and insulate my hot-water pipes and ducts, I won’t have to spend so much to heat and cool my house and heat my water. If I replace some of my lawn with a vegetable garden, I won't have to mow it, and I'll save money on produce in the summer. If I use a rotary mower, I'll never have to buy gas or change oil. If I install a rain-barrel on my downspout, I won't spend as much money to water my garden, and I'll be a better neighbor by reducing my impact on storm water. It became clear that I needed to stop working against myself and my surroundings.
My little house also started to give me answers to questions I hadn't known to ask. For instance, the wisdom of building a little Cape Cod and planting a couple of maple trees in front of it has become apparent. The maples, like the house are more than half a century old now, and regulate both water and insolation. I haven't paid to heat or cool my home since April.
The collective lesson for me has been (and continues to be) learning to understand what I really want, and how to get it without wasting resources on things I don't. Finding a little house that has space to suit my current and anticipated needs without extraneous space for extraneous things has made a huge difference.

Thanks to Charise for getting me thinking about this again.

It passes for a tribe

2007-06-16T09:34:00.000-04:00

As it turns out, people who are in the habit of chipping spearheads from flint and building fires with fire ploughs are somewhat difficult to reach by way of email. Who knew?
However, in response to one reader’s curiosity, and to make good on a pledge I made to some folks at this year’s MAPS Meet, I’ve followed some leads I heard about last week.
As one might imagine, there is considerable variation in the focus of primitive skills events. The spectrum of skills to be learned range from some of the earliest human technologies, to "frontier" craft. Some instructors even teach "re-technology", the practice of using found objects to craft simple tools (for instance, using some steel salvaged from the body of an old car to forge a knife or a hoe). While I’m certain that there are many other events like these, some formal, some informal, these are a few that I have recently heard mentioned. If readers know of others, I invite them to share them.

MAPS Rendezvous: Alas, you’ve missed it. The good news is that it has been held annually for several years, so you can mark your calendar for next year. The MAPS Rendezvous is typically in early June and has been held in Virginia and in Maryland, near the Pennsylvania border. The Rendezvous generally runs midweek through Sunday for about $200. The fee covers breakfast and dinner each day, campsite (or one of a limited number of bunkhouse beds) with bathhouse, and instruction; certain courses also have a small materials fee, generally not more than $5 (a couple of classes do have higher fees).
MAPS offers other events throughout the year, throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

Rabbitstick: At the risk of looking like a geographically illiterate Easterner*, this one is as close as I’ve been able to get to the Pacific Northwest (all apologies to Kiki and Cristi). This is a late summer/early fall event in Idaho and costs $245 (early registration). Fee covers campsite, instruction, 2 simple meals a day and all campground services (including sanitary services, firewood, potable water and parking). The site makes reference to some materials fees up to $100.

Wintercount: This event is run by the same outfit that offers Rabbitstick (above). Wintercount is a late winter event near Phoenix, AZ. At first glance, the other details seem to be the same as the other event.

National Rendezvous and Living History Foundation: This organization runs several events throughout the year in the Eastern and Midwestern US. These events run $55 each (for non-members), plus some additional fees for those who plan to sell things.

NMLRA Old Northwest Territory Primitive Rendezvous
June 22 to June 30, 2007
10712 Chatham Road Spencer, Ohio

NMLRA Northeastern Primitive Rendezvous
July 13 to July 20, 2007
Near Naples, New York

NMLRA Midwest Primitive Rendezvous
July 20 to July 28, 2007
Black Hawk Memorial Park, Woodford, Wisconsin

NMLRA Eastern Primitive Rendezvous
September 22 to September 30, 2007
Muddy Run Park, Holtwood, PA

It’s worth mentioning the Burning Man events, as well. These are not primitive skills events, per se, but I’ve observed some overlap in those who participate in these events.

*Author’s note: E.R. Dunhill is well aware of how far the Snake River is from the readers in question; E.R. Dunhill used to be a professional cartographer.

Found

2007-06-11T12:54:00.000-04:00

I’ve never been so happy to have blistered hands. I’ve caused myself such irritating injuries more times than I can recall, between a childhood of gardening and putting myself through school by working as a groundskeeper. But Friday, I earned this pain building a fire from scratch- no matches or lighter, no gun cotton, no 9-volt + steel wool, no lens aimed at the sun. Rather, at this year’s MAPS Meet, like in years past, we used scavenged hand drills, bow drills, and fire ploughs.
For the reader who has never tried this, I fear that while the "how" will be perfectly comprehensible, the genuine "what" will remain a mystery. I’ll leave those details of the experience in the shadows until a later time (although, this may remain one of those mysteries that forever confounds my pen).
Instead, I’ll focus on what emerged. Making tools and building fires, one of which handily survived a raging downpour, wove a community. I was a stranger to most of the other students and teachers at the event when I arrived. But, in a few days, and in many cases, in only a few hours, these became my little brothers and sisters, my aunts, my uncles. Each personal strand became part of a greater fabric.
The event underscored again some of those fleeting human qualities and pursuits that many of us don’t realize are gone, because we’ve never seen them. Knowledge, like how to speak Yucatec or Gaelic, how to fashion tools from simple materials, and how to predict weather, are vanishing; those skills don’t buy anything. The awareness of where water comes from and where it goes, or why we grow certain plants for food is already lost on many of us. Many of us assume that because these ways of thinking, observing, and interacting are dissolving into history that they must not be of value. Though most of us make this judgment without any firsthand knowledge of what we are losing.
The truth is that these thin streams of knowledge bear directly on many pressing problems. These pursuits encourage understanding of other people, other cultures. They promote an understanding of the fundamental connection between ecology and economy. And they teach people to recognize the difference between the illusion of abundance and the joy of genuinely having what we want and need.

Opiate of the masses

2007-06-06T09:57:00.001-04:00

This morning, I overheard a young woman on the train- a college student, perhaps- telling someone on the other end of a phone call that she was planning to get the new iPhone as soon as they are available. Apparently, her current iPod is "just so big", and her phone is nearly 2 years old, so she was going to throw it away, anyway. The fact that they both seemed to be in working order didn’t appear to be a consideration. This ordinary exercise in consumerism got me thinking about for a moment about cost, before raising the broader questions of value, values, and self.
It’s no surprise to the reader that people, especially Westerners, increasingly define themselves by what they own. I don’t need to dwell long on the ubiquity of advertising, nor on the shift of "music lover" from meaning one who has studied and practiced music (even if informally), to one who spends a great deal of money on MP3s.
I’m not suggesting that humans have not long been technologists. Our modern understanding of the history of humans is based substantially on what we have made, whether that be fluted stone spearheads, constitutions, or rifled muskets. Nor am I suggesting that humans have not equally long spent much of their time and energy learning technology.
A key difference I see is that people are increasingly losing the knowledge of how to provide for themselves, even in the most rudimentary ways. A century ago, even many city-dwellers kept garden plots that helped to fill their tables. Fifty years ago, a person able to afford a pickup truck likely knew something about how to maintain it beyond taking it to the dealer when the light comes on. The practical appreciation for how technologies like agriculture and automobiles work increased their perceived value.
I find myself again looking at the question that Pirsig raised, that of "what’s new" versus "what’s best". Perhaps if we could move toward this mindset, we could pursue genuine happiness and community, rather than drugging ourselves with new diversions and creating ever-larger piles of trash.

2007-06-01T09:21:00.001-04:00

"There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands."

The importance of being earnest

2007-05-30T08:47:00.001-04:00

The talking heads have been all over the airwaves with renewed zeal since Hollywood decided it’s getting warmer. (Never mind that those who actually understand and advance the natural sciences have been talking about this for years.) Now that the issue of climate change has once again entered the public awareness, the media have facilitated a wave of debate, primarily among people who are not scientists.
I’ve heard those who believe the weight of current scientific opinion declare victory and describe any further discussion as "beating a dead horse." I’ve heard those antagonistic to the research on climate say, "this is just what I believe and nothing you say can change my mind." There remain other skeptics, as there should in our system of science, who tout a litany of statistics and factoids, which range from flat-Earth science to perfectly valid concerns.
To address the argumentative skeptic, New Scientist published a special report, Climate change: A guide for the perplexed. The report, arranged into 26 sections dealing with popular climate science myths, is on the whole well researched and well written. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the climate debate, regardless of your opinion on the subject. However, among my favorite bones of contention, I ran across this in the page on modeling:

Finally, the claim is sometimes made that if computer models were any good, people would be using them to predict the stock market. Well, they are!
A lot of trading in the financial markets is already carried out by computers. Many base their decisions on fairly simple algorithms designed to exploit tiny profit margins, but others rely on more sophisticated long-term models.
Major financial institutions are investing huge amounts in automated trading systems, the proportion of trading carried out by computers is growing rapidly and some individuals have made a fortune from them. The smart money is being bet on computer models.

This statement is misleading. While government and industry do use increasingly robust computational tools to model markets and economies, New Scientist fails to make that connection. Electronic trading systems are not analogous to climate models, rather they process transactions in a similar fashion to the checkout system at an online retailer. Simple algorithms that make trades based upon small price fluctuations are also cool, but they do not attempt to model or predict anything, any more than a mousetrap predicts the number and frequency of mice attracted to bait. This evasive language on the subject of models may lead readers to question the veracity of other statements made throughout the site.
Part of the problem lies in the fact that many people don’t understand how professional science works. Many recall having solved for velocity in high school physics, or followed that epic poem that ends in "to make ATP" in college biology. At the professional level science does not fit neatly into half-page problems and essay questions, and requires judgment, years of hard work, and collaboration to reach meaningful conclusions. Many confuse debate over technique or corollary details as an attack on broad conclusions.
The contention of so many fields of science that humans are changing the global climate is a grave concern. The general public only now seems to be waking up to what scientists have been cautioning for years. And, as with any contentious debate in the United States, there are many who are digging their heels in because their party or their community leaders say so.
In a culture that lives on opposing dogmas and often struggles with developments in science, we can’t afford to confuse matters. As we work toward parlaying a hard-won mass-realization into changes in mindset and behavior, we must be honest.

In appreciation of her guidance

2007-05-29T09:15:00.001-04:00

It was a very good year

2007-05-25T09:58:00.000-04:00

I deviate today from my normal train of thought to observe a small anniversary. The Influence Machine has now been delivering its signature brand of analysis, polemics, and looted-art for a year. Beginning under the name "Phrenology" with the idea of exploring perceptions and the connection between people and ideas, this blog has kept me busy writing about our world, politics, and art.
I’d like to express my gratitude to all of those readers who have taken the time to visit and read what I have to say. For those who add their own insights and questions, this little anniversary is as much yours as it is mine.
I’d especially like to thank the blogger formerly known as Revolutionary Poetics for that last nudge out of the nest on the subject of poetry. Charise, Jez, and the vanished Windwhisperer, it’s always great to read what you think.
I think that’s quite enough self-congratulation for one year. Now back to our erratically scheduled blog, already in progress.

Don't act so surprised

2007-05-22T09:02:00.000-04:00

There's quite a brouhaha about the Bush administration and the National Museum of Natural History’s exhibit on climate change. Several news sources are reporting that the Whitehouse and the then-Republican Congress pressured the museum to dilute the science presented in its exhibit, Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely. Critics and former Institution staff, as well as consulting scientists, allege that there was a threat to the museum’s funding if the exhibit diverged too much from the party-line.
"I remember them telling me there was an attempt to make sure there was nothing in there that would be upsetting to any politicians," said John Calder, a lead climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who consulted on the project. "They're not stupid. They don't want to upset the people who pay them."
Of course there was pressure. It is a hard and regrettable truth of science in the US government that political pressure will affect research and educational priorities and the manner in which conclusions are presented.

A quick primer in how it works: Each agency or sub agency in the executive branch (of which all of those departments and independent agencies, like the Smithsonian are a part) requests a certain amount of money to run its programs for a fiscal year. The Office of Management and Budget, part of the Whitehouse reviews these budgets, throws out some fluff, throws out some very important stuff, adds-in some politically-motivated dollars, and pitches a giant budget for the entire executive branch to Congress. Congress takes it all in committees, argues, throws out more fluff, throws out more very important stuff, adds-in more politically-motivated dollars, and sets the operating budget. The end-product is a fiscal Frankenstein’s monster that has a great deal to do with lobbyists and the personal feelings of politicians.

Bearing this system in mind, every agency head and budget official must keep an eye on the politics of both the Whitehouse and Congress. They all know that next year may be a year to “make some tough choices”, if the agency makes statements that are politically harmful to those who control the purse strings.
That said, voters must be cognizant of this sometimes tacit, sometimes explicit pressure from elected officials. American science runs the risk of becoming an international laughing-stock if we allow the fossil fuel lobby and Biblical literalists to assert equal weight against the best science available. Science is not exclusively the stuff of academics and school children. Science forms the basis of many sectors of the US economy. It extends and improves life and informs the way we live. Moreover, it is a fundamental avenue of human inquiry, like religion and art. Science is far too important to ignore.
Politicians must allow scientists the academic freedom to be scientists and should be held accountable to having a working grasp of trends in medicine, the environment, energy, and engineering. They must recognize that they, most of whom have a background in law, politics, or business, should be asking questions of those who have dedicated their careers to the sciences. Voters must be willing to deny continued public employment to those politicians who either cannot or will not do this.

Forecast

2007-05-18T09:15:00.001-04:00

A to B

2007-05-17T08:55:00.000-04:00

In my brief respite between classes, I’ve been taking the train with Carl Sandburg and Gary Snyder. I am reading Turtle Island for the first time and am finding again in Snyder a kindred spirit. I was particularly struck this morning by Tomorrow’s Song.
Bearing in mind that in the company of the rest of Turtle Island, Tomorrow’s Song won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1975, I find the poem to be remarkably prescient. It is perhaps more resonant with the casual reader now than when it was first published more than three decades ago. It reads in part (forgive my cheats in trying to quickly emulate the original typeset):

The USA slowly lost its mandate
in the middle and later twentieth century
it never gave the mountains and rivers,
___trees and animals,
______a vote.
all the people turned away from it
___myths die; even continents are impermanent
…
We look to the future with pleasure
we need no fossil fuel
get power within
grow strong on less.
…

I find parallels here with Peter Barnes' idea of legal standing for common wealth. Barnes advocates the broad use of trusts to manage and to give persona to commodities and resources, like publicly-owned forests and the atmosphere. In the world that Barnes envisions, "the mountains and rivers, / trees and animals" have, if not a vote, a voice.
Skirting the Buddhist underpinnings of the second excerpt in favor of a pragmatic interpretation, I see a connection with the writings of McDonough and Braungart. These authors champion a sea change in how goods (and the built environment) are both designed and consumed. McDonough and Braungart seek to overturn the concept of waste by regarding the output of any technological process as an input for another.
In this scenario, efficient use is not an inhibitor of economic growth, but a catalyst for economic growth. The entrepreneur and the consumer both stand to "grow strong on less".
Moreover, McDonough, an architect, consistently pays heed to the aesthetic. He regards the enjoyment of the manufactured environment as a nonnegotiable requirement of proper design. Snyder seems to have foreseen so much with so few words.

Spinning

2007-05-15T10:26:00.000-04:00

By now you’ve read about it. In fact, you may well have read about it every year for the better part of a decade. “The Great Gas-Out”, wherein by avoiding purchasing fuel on a single day, you will at once thrash the high price of fuel and end the war for oil and hubris.
Unfortunately, this action is not based on an understanding of finance, economics, or the environment. Given that most versions of the propaganda surrounding this futile exercise simply enjoin the reader to buy before or after this single day, there will be no effect. If consumers purchase the same amount of goods during the same accounting cycle, they accomplish nothing more than an oddity in the books. At the end of the month, the fuel retailers have earned exactly the same amount of money. Moreover, the refiners and extraction companies, insulated by layers of supply chain, never see any difference.
In truth, the equation for spending less on gas is simple. Many would call it painfully simple: to save on fuel, save on fuel. By combining and otherwise minimizing trips, using public transportation when feasible, walking or cycling, favoring locally-produced goods, and driving a fuel-efficient vehicle, anyone can reduce the amount of money they spend on fuel. Moreover, if consumers would adopt these practices en masse, they would actually impact the price of fuel.
To again quote Tolstoy, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” This token protest will accomplish nothing, because it is an empty effort that expects someone else to make the real changes. Changing the world starts with changing oneself.

Drawing on

2007-05-09T08:47:00.000-04:00

Monday afternoon, I skipped lunch in favor of browsing a new exhibition at the National Gallery. This collection of prints and sketches, Fabulous Journeys and Faraway Places: Travels on Paper 1450–1700, explores the ideas of landscape and time.
The collection brings to light an earlier concept of geography that predates our contemporary idea of literalism. The maps here display information synoptically (as do modern maps), but do so in a humanistic fashion that may seem strange to the reader accustomed to charts designed to display all features within x meters of their true horizontal location, with 95% confidence. In the exhibit, place, space, and time are in the mind of the beholder.
These depictions embody an aesthetic sensibility and a willingness to combine the observable and the metaphysical that have become lost. Images of pilgrimage to Rome or Jerusalem contain biblical imagery, recognizing that travel to these places is as much a spiritual as physical journey. Prints of folktales recognize that traveling is more about movement of the individual’s mind than of the body.
The observer is left with the realization that geography has paradoxically become increasingly collectivist in an increasingly individualistic world. We delude ourselves into believing that there is nothing left to explore, because satellites above, and geographers, anthropologists, ecologists, and geologists among us have left no blank spots on the map.

Each of us is an individual, and the atlas behind our eyes is unique. Each of us is filled with mostly blank pages. The apparent completeness of the atlases at the bookstore and the library becomes liberating in this scenario. None of us is compelled to explore a new place on behalf of everyone. Instead we are free to follow the physical paths that will expand the landscapes of mind, spirit, and relationship. Moreover, the more we open our eyes, the more we discover that the published maps are missing details, and sometimes get it all wrong.
Explore, understand, interact.

A work in progress, likely to be titled Transit of Vulcan or Syzygy

2007-05-03T13:02:00.000-04:00

Whispering clouds follow where I tread
betraying these hermetic tracks
sculpted by raggedy books purchased as a student
as they defeat exhaling valley after parchy hill

Eager summer sun scrambles
after worm that is already mine
this bipedal racing-snail
rising 20 minutes behind the day
lingering at not quite half of 2,175 miles

I never know her name

I am a half-hearted border collie pilgrim
she the hyena ascetic

We wag salutory tails
as duty concatenates words like
~~~snow fed
~~~~~~sandy bottom
~~~~~~~~~rock tripe
~~~~~~yesterday
before she recalls forty cabbage whites
who settled on her bag at Big Meadows
and her tongue knits a slithy yarn on copperheads

Mercury shields my left eye from the sun
casts a shadow on the right side of her face

The holy here at last draws a secret X at our feet:
Wrought with archers' potence
limbs engage as much as resist
strain and stretch
until finally I seize
upon mulberry's most enticing branch

Indian pipe-stems evolve from slight wrists
place pinched fruit
first in their owners' maw
then on my palate

Coarse juice reacts with feral sweat
to render some berserk drug in my brain
that courses to a stone-tool drumbeat
in the periphery of the firelight of my mind

I see polychrome horizons
emerge from the battle of rain against phyllite
to bear annelids who play chess
or backgammon or go with amino acids

A third arm joins mine as Puck
adds her sinewy weight in pursuit of
always more We're
dazed and knotted among wet blades
bough having failed
in the wandering instant of distracted neurons
that disorganized bark, shins, leaves, elbows

She howls out hysterical mulberry pulp
my own laughter preemted by the impact of face against skull
a collision that strips away plaid bandana
which had since some clear old deep
conceiled peach-fuzz backpacker hair

Ropey knees and jabbing palms
climb my scattered frame
as she regains her bearing and her bearings

My inibriated form follows
like a johnboat with 1 oar
to find (we'll call her Urania)
feeding bag to devouring bag

Their combined burden embraces red raptor shoulders
and clutches hornbeam hips

A hundred domesticated pleas sling slack lariats
fail to trip right nanny goat feet
as they mete out
steps
yards
miles
years

2007-05-02T09:28:00.001-04:00

Local

2007-05-01T08:13:00.000-04:00

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

I've seen this sentiment written a hundred times, usually attributed to Leo Tolstoy. It struck me on the train this morning that this has been the central environmental problem of the United States, and possibly of the world.
I know, as likely does the reader, scores of people who lament the problems of the world in a class or over drinks, but never make the connection of actually doing something. Maybe they feel overwhelmed by the scope of the problem, and maybe they feel alienated by activists and zealots who feel comfortable sitting in judgment. Perhaps they are simply confused by outlandishly complicated subjects like geophysics and materials engineering. And, I was reminded this weekend, while volunteering for a local environmental group, that some people are simply red-faced cranks who prefer to complain than to act.
The time for enviro-cliques, good-guys, bad-guys, apathy, and loud-mouthed crankery are at an end. I’ll leave the lid on the climate can of worms. Instead, I’ll assert that everyone can agree that there are environmental problems, whether that’s unsafe chemicals leaching into an aquifer, or a dearth of rainbow trout to catch and eat with capers, sage, and lemon.

The first step in overturning Tolstoy’s conundrum is to stop thinking of oneself as a closed system. This is a sometimes-useful, though not altogether accurate, intellectual construct.
Every living thing we know to exist or to have existed has relied upon a roughly fixed set of resources we share. Each living thing (and a host of physical processes) enacts changes on those resources, sometimes making them appear new. However, with only tiny additions and subtractions, the amounts remain the same.

In this sense, changing the world and changing oneself are the same thing. Drawing from the same collective of inputs and outputting into the same commons means that every action one takes affects others and is at the same time influenced by others. By reducing the impact of these inputs and outputs the individual changes self and world at once.

It’s easy being green

2007-04-23T09:03:00.000-04:00

Pick one, pick five, or try them all.

Read Walden
Eat local produce
Plant a local breed of tree
Go meat-free at least one day per week
Use compact fluorescent light bulbs
Read Silent Spring
Take chemistry
Walk in a local park
Ride the train instead of driving
Go fishing
Insulate your hot-water pipes
Eat fair-trade chocolate
Plant a vegetable garden
Combine trips
Use your local library
Swim in the ocean
Compost
Vacation in your region instead of flying
Drive a hybrid car
Take geology
Use local heirloom seed
Install a rain barrel on your gutter/downspout
Smell the flowers
Recycle
Take agronomy
Read Cradle-to-Cradle
Go running
Vote

Isolated

2007-04-20T09:45:00.001-04:00

One hundred-five years ago today, Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the element radium. Their Nobel Prize-winning research and that of many others would pave the way for all manner of applications of nuclear science, from weapons, to medicine, to energy.
As we grapple with the accelerating human demand for energy, we must do so with an open mind. Burning things long-buried carries a host of problems. So too do wind, solar, nuclear, biomass, and any other method of generating energy. Each has advantages and disadvantages that may suit it to one application, but make it unacceptable for another. For this reason, environmentalists and industrialists cannot afford to indulge in mindless dogmatism.
Conservation remains a curiously under-used strategy. The consumer can, through simple choices, choose to use less energy without detracting from his or her quality of life. Using compact fluorescent light bulbs, reducing the amount of meat consumed each week, and combining local trips are painless.
The mass-localization of power generation also holds great potential. In many parts of the world, natural conditions support residential electric power generation. In some places this means photovoltaic shingles on the roof, in others this means a few windmills in the back pasture. This puts an important source of capital in the hands of the property-owner, and obviates the need for many long distance power lines, in which large amounts of energy are wasted in transmission.
We must also recognize that there are demands for power that cannot presently be met with the combination of efficient use and mass-localization. Many industrial and transportation power users legitimately need very large amounts of power on an uninterrupted basis. Given increasing concerns over atmospheric carbon and climate, fossil fuels seem a poor solution.
Nuclear energy offers a strong alternative for many applications. Like fossil fuels, like solar power, like wind, like biomass, it is an imperfect solution. For every complex problem, there exists a huge spectrum of solutions, many entirely bad, few (if any) entirely good. The expansion of nuclear energy is, however, worth serious consideration.
Nuclear energy offers a number of compelling advantages. It does not directly produce carbon pollution. Estimates of usable nuclear material suggest that nuclear fuel could last for thousands, if not millions of years. Moreover, the distribution of usable fuels offers the promise of energy independence for many countries.
While efficient use and mass localization remain critically important, we must recognize that there is no magic bullet. Each need for energy is a discrete problem that may require a discrete solution. We must remain creative, open-minded, and we must keep talking.

I'm bringing stupid back

2007-04-19T09:47:00.000-04:00

My regular readers know that I am not given to flogging the current administration. Partisan Politics will be riding the jackass and the elephant, alongside Pestilence and Famine, at the apocalypse. However, the EPA's recent statement on greenhouse gases borders on farce. The EPA press release accompanying their Greenhouse Gas Inventory Reports reads in part:

"The Bush Administration's unparalleled financial, international and domestic commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is delivering real results," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.

The release glosses-over the fact that carbon emissions increased during the period in question. "It's a sad state of affairs when global warming emissions go up, yet the Bush administration tries to spin it as a victory," responded Frank O'Donnell of the Clean Air Watch.
This administration refused to put into practice the Kyoto Protocol, because it "would have wrecked our economy". Bush claimed that ratifying the agreement would cost America jobs. I must ask the question again: How many American jobs has purchasing foreign oil produced? In truth, the answer is many: Haliburton, Bechtel, and Kellogg, Brown, & Root have all boasted growth, fighting a war for oil. Has pouring money into war been good for the US economy?
Perhaps my reader believes humans are warming the climate, and perhaps the reader does not. Regardless of your feelings on this point or your personal politics, the Bush administration’s spin is simply insulting.

For Blacksburg

2007-04-18T09:21:00.000-04:00

Fix his earth-bound root

2007-04-16T08:54:00.001-04:00

Saturday morning, we put two hundred-fifty trees in the ground. Waterford Park in Frederick, MD now boasts the beginnings of new native forest cover. Little more than green twigs, these red oaks, black walnuts, white pines, and sycamores will grow to ultimately regulate storm-water and provide habitat for wildlife.
This forest-to-be is the product of an ersatz tribe of retirees, teachers, students, greens, and local nonprofit-folk. Some of them see the park from their bedroom windows, others drove the better part of an hour to help out. What is significant is that so many otherwise strangers worked together in stewardship of a shared place.
The collective benefits of this park and others like it are manifest in perhaps as many ways as there were people at the planting. Some enjoy watching a Cooper’s hawk patrolling the park. Some want a better place for members of the community to gather. Others see the maxim of Yu the Great, “To protect your rivers, protect your mountains”, played out in the hills around Carroll Creek, wending its way toward the Chesapeake Bay.
For those of my readers who are in earshot of DC, Baltimore, or Frederick, the Potomac Conservancy has more events related to urban forestry and their Growing Native program. For more far-flung readers, I encourage you to find and invest in the common wealth in your own back yard. Like cash in the bank, parks, rivers, streams, and beaches are wealth that can be increased through investment.

Bright blessed days, dark sacred nights

2007-04-11T11:53:00.001-04:00

Busy with work and school, I appropriate some words of Emerson that have been on my mind for the past few days. These, from one of his essays on nature, speak further on the immediacy of nature in the mind.
“There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcyons may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather, which we distinguish by the name of Indian Summer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours, seems longevity enough. The solitary places do not seem quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he makes into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her. We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would escape the barriers which render them comparatively impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to entrance us. The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year. How easily we might walk onward into opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature.”

Alas, the storm is come again

2007-04-06T08:52:00.001-04:00

It’s in us. When people have absolutely nothing else to talk about, they talk about the weather. The subject is not merely a placeholder- rather it is a subject that walks along in the back of every person’s head, a pace and a half behind the immediate present. The stumbling, “What do you think of this weather we’re having?” may be the small talk of last resort, but it is relevant.
Before we domesticated the wilderness of time with an armload of calendars- solar and sidereal, Gregorian and Julian, even the temptingly primitive lunar, and leashed it with the autistic clock, wild time was weather. This relationship transcends the familiar running-late time and emotes the past-life when-do-I-plant and the-herd-is-moving time.
Weather as time is the stuff of tribes, a communion from before we all half-connected from a thousand miles away. Weather-chatter asserts the sanctity of place, the worth of local community in the face of ever more globalization.
We have all but forgotten the visceral awareness that is so tangled with weather and tribe. We don’t know where the water comes from or where it goes. Do you have a well? How long has that water traveled? Does your tap pour from a reservoir? What grows on the slopes around it? We have convinced ourselves that grapes come from a perforated plastic bag that never zips exactly shut. If you knew the names of all of the chemicals sprayed on those grapes, would you know what they do?
In the coming days, resurrect weather as time, learn the secrets of your place. Stand outside your home and see in your mind’s eye where the sun rises in June and where in December. Divine where the first spring shoots rise, ultimately to process toward their next winter sleep.
Whether this place is your home since childhood or some brief limbo before you find yourself so soon stationed somewhere else, learn it.

Loaf

2007-04-03T09:21:00.001-04:00

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
-Henry David Thoreau

Sakura

2007-03-30T09:04:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow kicks-off this year’s National Cherry Blossom Festival, commemorating Tokyo’s gift of cherry trees to Washington, DC 95 years ago. The opening ceremony at the National Building Museum will feature an exhibit on Earth-friendly design in Japan to compliment the museum’s existing exhibit, The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design. (For speculation on the shape of Tokyo’s future, visit this post at the always-hip BLDG Blog)

The cherry blossoms, beautiful and simple, are a treasure that belongs to all Americans, one that we gladly share with our guests. As the signs of the shifting season emerge in your neighborhood, take a moment to notice our common wealth- the neighborhood park, your local library, a favorite old song, the air we share. These things are valuable and they are yours.

Suzuki on Suzuki

2007-03-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

The 15th annual DC Environmental Film Festival has come and gone. Alas, I missed most of it, because I was home nursing a back injury. I did, however, have the privilege of hearing David Suzuki speak.
For my American readers, David Suzuki is a preeminent conservationist, scientist, environmental advocate, and next to maple syrup and hockey, may be Canada’s greatest contribution to the world. Last Saturday, he spoke at the National Museum of Natural History to promote his most recent book, an autobiography.
Suzuki recalled his early years, some of which were spent as a prisoner in a Canadian interment camp, along with so many other innocent people who looked or sounded like “the enemy”. He described his early influences: the Canadian wilderness, professors at Amherst and U of Chicago, and his first reading of Silent Spring. He spoke in a matter of fact manner about work with Al Gore (before he was Al Gore), with Chico Mendes (the murdered Brazilian conservationist and labor activist), with entertainers, and with Amazonian warriors and their near-deadly stand-off with the Brazilian army.
What struck me and much of the audience about his talk was the role of the US. It became yet again apparent that Americans are falling further behind our friends and neighbors in certain avenues of science and education, and in stewardship of the environment.
The David Suzuki Foundation is working hard to promote environmental awareness among Canadians. Initiatives like Sustainability within a Generation and the Nature Challenge, however, are equally applicable anywhere in the industrialized world. I encourage readers to consider some of the goals of the Nature Challenge and to recognize that many of these are not merely good for the environment, but will also save money and improve individual health:

1. Reduce home energy by 10%
2. Eat meat-free meals once a week
3. Buy a fuel efficient, low-polluting car
4. Choose an energy efficient home and appliances
5. Stop using pesticides
6. Walk, bike or take transit to regular destinations
7. Prepare your meals with locally produced food
8. Choose a home close to regular destinations
9. Support alternatives to the car
10. Get involved, stay informed

{click}

2007-03-16T09:05:00.000-04:00

Between work, a midterm, a term paper, and activity with a volunteer group, I’ve had precious little time for writing prose or poetry, beyond a handful of haiku. I’ve been reading Peter Barnes’ latest book during stolen moments on my train ride. Yesterday, I was suddenly struck by the words of Emerson (from his essay on history) vis-à-vis this notion of common wealth:

I am owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.

This was one of those quiet epiphanies that, for me, braided a pile of semi-disparate pursuits into a single simple strand. I’ve been skimming some of the literature on natural resource economics as a potential source of guidance on assessing the value of archival information. The parallel I’m trying to understand is that of the net present value of ecosystem services versus the NPV of an archives. Both resources have indeterminate valuable lifespans and contain some elements with a clear “practical” value and other elements that are “useless”.
What I hadn’t fully considered until reading Barnes was that these two value streams, nature and culture, are more deeply linked as “common wealth”. Just as rivers, oceans, and the atmosphere are not owned by any individual, company, or consortium, neither are the tools of government and history. These commodities, on some level, belong to the public.
Now all I have to do is solve a value equation full of so many zeros and undefined variables.

2007-03-07T08:49:00.000-05:00

Crocus mourns
Grey billows cast white shrouds
Marmot is no seer

Happy one-hundred-and-three, creator of the truffula tree

2007-03-02T09:09:00.003-05:00

(For those readers who have navigated to this page in search of the Lorax image, I also invite you to read and share your opinion at Blue Island Almanack.

One hundred-three years ago today, Theodor Geisel (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991), known and beloved by so many children as Dr. Seuss, was born. Many of his books strove to teach something important, while translating the confusing world of adults into something infinitely identifiable to children. For many, Horton the elephant and Yertle the turtle might as well be real childhood friends, and “Sam-I-am” is repeated like so much half-remembered scripture.
One of Dr. Seuss’ most important works was not the same commercial success as his other books, and has the dubious distinction of having been banned by a number of school systems. (This in my view is ordinarily reason enough to read a book; school systems don’t go to the trouble of banning a book that is just plain bad.) Though, this work remains an evergreen favorite of environmentalists, and is once again relevant to raging public debate.
The Lorax, published some 35 years ago, is a children’s book about industry and the environment, introducing little ones (and many parents) to such arcane concepts as externalities, the legal standing of nonhuman species, and reclamation. What’s perhaps most compelling about the book is that these ideas, the subject of research and discussion by economists, ecologists, and industrialists, are reduced to an ethical problem understandable to children.
The questions raised by this book are again at the forefront of international debate. Does it make sense to use non-renewable resources until they are exhausted? If common resources are owned by all, why do only a few benefit from their commercialization? And, why do so many pay for the damage done?
If we do not answer these questions and respond, then who will? Today and this weekend, I urge my readers to address these questions in how they live their lives. This doesn’t mean I’m asking you to go out and chain yourself to a redwood, or to start a movement. Instead, think about ways you can improve your life and your world by using resources responsibly. Buy some compact fluorescent light bulbs. Eat local produce. Try walking or taking public transportation instead of driving. Read to your kids from The Lorax. You can help to solve the resource conundrum with simple choices any day.

Meter

2007-02-27T08:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday at lunchtime, I made a mad-dash to Busboys & Poets. Alas, I had no time to stay for a bite to eat or a cup of tea. I went there to pick-up a copy of Peter Barnes’ most recent book, of which, B&P still had signed copies.
As I passed the tragically ugly orange and brown gates at the U Street Metro Station, I justified the addition of the expense of the Metro ride as the cost of getting the autographed copy. It was also part of the consumer decision to favor a socially responsible business within my own community, rather than buying from Amazon, or Borders, or B&N.
It occurred to me as I walked at out-of-breath pace from the station, that the good people of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had done me a favor by telling me how much my trip had cost me. They quantified the exact cost to me of each leg of my quick little trip. This is not a fact that is so conveniently delivered to me by my car.
With a car, it’s not merely the gasoline that drives the cost of the trip. That’s calculated easily enough, based upon the givens of gas mileage, trip distance, and fuel cost per gallon. The cost of car payments, muddied by depreciation, plus insurance makes for a messier (though still solvable) equation. Wheels started turning over the per-mile cost of my tax dollars in both highway subsidies and public transportation funds; over the cost of the tread on my tires versus tread on my shoes; on driving and later going to the gym, versus walking to and from the train station and taking care of transportation and exercise together. I put the snowballing apples-to-apples dollar-comparison of rail versus car on hold.
Instead, Al Gore’s disembodied voice asked me to consider this problem in light of carbon. I began to wonder if I should have the right to know how much carbon my car introduces into the air per mile, and how much my daily train ride or my periodic plane trip. Obviously, I’d be willing to pay something for that information.
The USDA makes recommendations about diet, and mandates that food producers let the consumer know what exactly is in each serving. Vendors baulked when USDA began working toward this program, and anyone who buys food in the US pays a little bit for it. Perhaps the DOE or EPA could make similar recommendations with respect to carbon emissions, and require vehicle manufacturers and providers of transportation services to make their carbon emissions conveniently publicly available. Informed consumers could then better drive the market toward sustainable business.

Steps forward

2007-02-26T11:45:00.000-05:00

Earlier this month, BP announced its academic partners in an innovative new research program. The University of California, Berkeley, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will collectively receive $500 million over ten years to implement an Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI). The institute will research new methods and new applications of biological sciences in the energy sector.
EBI will primarily pursue clean new fuels for road transport, using advances in crop sciences. The application of this research will reduce US dependence on foreign oil, reduce carbon emissions, and will expand markets for US agricultural products.
BP has been advancing toward a more sustainable business model for several years. In 2000, as part of the reorganization associated with its 1998 takeover of Amoco, the firm began the highly-visible evolution of its brand identity into “Beyond Petroleum”. This new moniker is emblematic of an important change. The firm has recognized that its core technology, its core function, petroleum extraction and refining, are real problems.
Instead of remaining an ecological neigh-sayer and putting short-term profits ahead of social responsibility, BP is pursuing a sustainable future. Their business model has climbed a rung on the ladder from “oil company” to the much broader “energy company”. In so doing, they have declared their intent to make an honest dollar. BP’s Energy Biosciences Institute is a tangible step in that direction.
While it remains important to use energy efficiently and responsibly, consider supporting BP’s efforts, as a consumer.

Lights... camera... Think globally, act locally

2007-02-21T16:57:00.000-05:00

On Thursday, the DC Environmental Film Festival announced its 2007 line-up for screenings and discussions. This year, the guest list will include Canadian naturalist and honorary hipster, David Suzuki.
Among Suzuki's claims to fame are the bylines on more books than most people read in 2 years, and the perennially popular documentary series, The Nature of Things. He also inspired at least one pedantic blogger to take an interest in sciences other than physics.
Films will be screened at the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, American U., GWU, the National Geographic Society, and many of the major DC museums.
Notably among the films this year are An Inconvenient Truth and the world premier of the documentary Ribbon of Sand. The 10-day festival will be the US-premier for 9 other environmental films. Organizers are also showing a number of green films geared toward kids. A (sizeable) PDF of the schedule is available, but readers might find this one a little more user-friendly.
If you are local to the DC area, this event is always interesting. If, alas, you can't be here in person, many of the films are screened in other venues, or are available on DVD. Ask your local library or bohemian coffee-house about hosting a screening.

Reading

2007-02-09T09:43:00.000-05:00

Contemplate the workings of this world, listen to the words of the wise, and take all that is good as your own. With this as your base, open your own door to truth. Do not overlook the truth that is right before you. Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything – even mountains, rivers, plants, and streams- should be your teacher.

-Morihei Ueshiba

I wait and watch

2007-02-04T20:10:00.000-05:00

Friday evening, I took my wife to see the King’s Singers for her birthday. When I bought the tickets weeks ago, I had absolutely no inkling that the program would lend insight into the train of thought I’ve been following here.
The program was titled, Landscape and Time, as is their latest album. In introducing their newly recorded work, Christopher Gabbitas remarked, “we are, all of us, a product of our time and geography”. This commentary prefaced a performance of music from Estonia, Japan, England, Finland, and Hungary, but is equally well-suited to drawing-out a nonconformity common to modern life. Though place and time shape us, we seem to be selectively blind to these influences.
We remain very much creatures of time, but increasingly lose the element of geography. In particular we forget the intimate microgeography that in ages past was part and parcel of every human’s daily life. The land was family.
In a song combining the music of English composer Richard Rodney Bennett and the words of 17th century clergyman and poet John Donne, the ensemble observed, “we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons”. For the author, this was an immutable truth taught to him, not by a book, but in the lessons learned by living with eyes open. This former plain-fact is now much diluted, and the spiritual lesson Donne intended to convey with it may also be.
The translated text of an ancient Japanese poem appears in the program notes from Friday’s performance. Here again, words from the past use a collective appreciation of the natural world to artfully speak of the human condition. The union of person and place that creates such metaphors now grows dim in the periphery of the firelight of our minds.

Alone beside the river of birds
Near the stream’s upland source
I wait and watch
Beside a bridge of stones
And in this melancholy scene
I hear the nu-e-dori night bird
Cry out unanswered in the dark,
And then at dawn the morning-bird
Fluttering and flitting to-and-fro about its nest
Like a grieving prince, wilted by the heat of lost love,
Who roams, east-to-west, like the Evening Star,
Ceaselessly going and coming
In an endless round of departure and return.

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen

2007-02-01T20:40:00.000-05:00

As my regular readers have likely noticed, I've been puzzling over ecology and commerce lately. These subjects have gotten the wheels turning over changing systems and all of their changeable parts.
Every individual is the expression of a species, and every species is the expression its greater ecology. In a very similar fashion, businesses are recursive functions of their respective markets and regulatory environments. The system is a moving target, continually recomposing the parts that compose it.
In recent weeks, I've found insight on these concerns in several books and in conversations with friends, famliy, coworkers, and veritable strangers. I've seen new truth in the old chestnut that ecology and economy describe two pieces of the same whole. I believe that ethics is curiously absent from that maxim and I'm beginning to wonder if education may be equally so.
As I continue to try to explore connections and the domino forces that enact, create, and destroy those connections, I find it necessary to evolve this blog. The most obvious changes to those who have been here before are the new appearance and the new name. The URL will remain the same. It will be 20% more insightful, while only 5% more pretentious*.
Less obvious changes are those that continually occur in my head and in the world we share- a world of nature, art, culture, commerce, and connection. I aim to delve into all of these subjects in greater detail as The Influence Machine adapts to its environment and strives to adapt its environment.
As always, I welcome questions, comments, rants, and if you feel the need, verbal abuse over what I write. Book, movie, and music recommendations may be better-received than abuse.
Without further ado, The Influence Machine.

*The author is setting target metrics for the gradual phasing-out of pretense.

Kyoto?

2007-01-30T09:48:00.000-05:00

W described climate change as a “serious challenge” in his State of the Union speech last week. What he actually means by that and what he aims to do to address this challenge remain to be seen.
The UN environmental agencies are drawing to a close a major study on global climate change. The news wires report that the study is expected to predict a 3.0 C (5.4 F) warming of average annual temperatures between now and 2100. This report is to further attribute this warming, with some 90 percent certainty, to the activities of humans.
While far from perfect, the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol by much of the industrialized world has enjoyed some success in putting the brakes on what the best science in the world believes to be the cause of this problem.
The US government has sat idly by while many of our friends and allies have worked to reverse this problem. The excuse given by the Bush administration was that adopting the Kyoto Protocol would cost Americans jobs. I have to ask, how many American jobs does the purchase of foreign oil create? How would cultivating a domestic biofuels industry be bad for the economy?
Given the speed of government and the fact that Kyoto runs-out in 2012, it may be Kyoto’s successor that turns on the heat under the US. In conjunction with the UN’s new report on global climate, there is a redoubled effort to hold a new summit on climate. UN scientists are lobbying Secretary General Ban to hold such a summit in September. Given planned discussion of warming-related concerns like the flooding of coastal cities, perhaps the Bush administration will suggest New Orleans as a venue. Perhaps not.
Can we wait for the government to stop talking and start acting? The US and its neighbors to the north and south have enormous agricultural resources. We have the potential to move toward energy independence by producing ethanol and biodiesel for transportation, but the entrepreneur, not the bureaucrat, must realize this change.
American industry has been stymied by a government of the oil, by the oil, and for the oil. Perhaps if we stopped creating an infrastructure so lopsided in favor of petroleum, other sources of energy could compete in a free market. McDonald’s could start marketing McDiesel, made from all of that used fry oil, and Mr. Daniel could start selling Old No. 7 high-performance fuel for hogs. Or is that “hawgz”?
We need more consumer demand and new policies that don’t hand so much to oil companies.

Capitalism 3.0

2007-01-26T09:37:00.001-05:00

Wednesday evening, I saw author Peter Barnes give a talk at Busboys and Poets, on his latest book, Capitalism 3.0. Barnes raises some good points on the role of both the state and the corporation in the division of resources, and offers some ideas on innovating the relationship between economy, ethics, and environment.
He contends that the state's role in commerce has historically been to redistribute collective resources or "common wealth" to entrepreneurs or corporations. Examples include the ridiculous land give-aways to US railroad companies in the 19th century, or the distribution of broadcast spectra to media companies in the early days of radio and television. Think farmsteads, mineral rights, logging rights, &c on previously public land. (Eventually, the state winds-up fighting itself with the advent of anti-trust and monopoly laws. The government punishes corporations for being very good at what the government helped them accomplish.)
Barnes discussed the expansion of trusts to act as perpetual agents of commonly held resources, in much the same way corporations act as perpetual agents of shareholders. Though, in his vision, trusts would be established not simply to curtail suburban sprawl in choice farm country, but also to leverage the economic value of common resources like the atmosphere, or the Gulf of Mexico. Companies would buy the rights to release waste into the air, rather than essentially getting this resource for free. On the whole, I think this philosophy has great potential.
I can't help but think that some of the event's peripheral discussions about for-profit organizations directly supporting nonprofit organizations may not be advocating the best new model. Clearly there is great potential for social benefit in such an arrangement. But, I'm increasingly thinking that we need to enact a broad shift toward the integration of ecological and social "cash flow" into the fabric of private enterprise. To become sustainable in the true sense, the firm must create products and services that directly benefit their communities and our collective environment.

Priorities

2007-01-24T09:17:00.001-05:00

The National Academy of Sciences recently published a report that raises concerns over US resources for observing and predicting weather and climate. NASA has suffered a loss of some half a billion dollars with respect to its programs that observe the Earth, while NOAA is suffering through cost and schedule overruns on some of its own critical Earth observation programs. These are critically important programs that require adequate funding.
In his State of the Union speech, the President called for Congress to “control spending in Washington”. Given the push to balance the budget without raising taxes, gutting the civilian government would be necessary, since there is apparently no effort to control spending in Baghdad.
It's too late to spend the cost of facilitating civil war on the kinds of science that forewarn of a Katrina or put the climate change debate to bed. Any more words spent on "could've, would've, and should've" are wasted energy.
The President paid lip-service to the development and use of biofuels. The public should applaud him for his about-face on this topic. The implementation of biodiesel, instead of a plan to supplant fossil fuels by funding research into a horizon technology* like fuel cells, is a sound decision. However, the ponderous “diversification” of energy sources to yield a 20% reduction in gasoline use over the next 10 years, as the President suggests, is inadequate. Government is not the solution. Like so many environmental problems, the answer lies with entrepreneurs.
Given the enormity of the US agricultural sector, why is it that biodiesel isn't available from every filling station in the country? New businesses require demand. As long as we accept only what we are offered, businesses have little impetus to change.
Clearly, the government’s values and long-term plans are flawed. We have collectively chosen to spend money fighting a war for oil, rather than investing in energy independence and in our environment. Demand more and be part of the solution.

*It is not the author's intent to disparage fuel cell technology, nor to question its technical feasibility. It is characterized here as a horizon technology because of the difficulty in commercializing it.

The Picture of E.R. Dunhill

2007-01-23T09:18:00.000-05:00

It’s been a good long while since I’ve done any writing of consequence. By this, I don’t mean to suggest that what I was writing over the summer changed the world, but rather that what I wrote was an effort to change my world. I can deflect the blame for little and poor writing to all of the distractions that take place on the other side of the blog, but this seems disingenuous.
It seems now, maybe as the result of evolution, or maybe the simple realization of something that has been true from the beginning, that my MO for writing this blog is not what I'd like it to be. I’ve been keeping the reader at arms-length by neglecting writing much about what I think.
A few words from Emerson have been with me the last two months as I relocated a few miles down the road from where I used to live.

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me.

I increasingly wonder if perhaps the underlying premise of this thought is flawed. The problem of society may in truth be with the self, in which case, a man must retreat from his own mind and practice in order to find some improved state. I have been endeavoring to do this by reading new perspectives and trying to craft for myself a philosophy, a calling, perhaps. When I have that all figured-out, I’ll let you know.
As I’ve looked around over the last few weeks, I think this place, Phrenology, requires a change, too. More on that, later.

A view from my living room, yesterday at half past three

2007-01-22T11:41:00.000-05:00

snow falls on bamboo
tiger-gusts will cut it down
I sip hot chocolate

Waste not, want not

2007-01-18T11:47:00.000-05:00

In keeping with my reading plan, I’ve just read William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s treatise, Cradle to Cradle. The book discusses traditional environmental and industrial philosophy and is a call to adopt a new design ethic with roots in both mass-customization and systems ecology.
The authors summarize recent industrial history, with some emphasis on the USA, noting both early design successes and a few of the causes for environmental negligence and exploitation. They also outline what they see as fundamental shortcomings of modern environmental thought. On the latter, they sometimes degenerate into a practice unfortunately common within the environmental camp, flogging anything that sounds mainstream. (They also use entirely too many parenthetical asides.)
However, accepting this and the fact that the book sometimes reads like recycled marketing collateral, their positions have considerable merit. McDonough and Braungart envision a broad design school that gives appropriately equitable weight to economy, environment, and ethics. They propose an overhaul of design practices to be appropriate to local environments and to eliminate the concept of waste, in favor of cycles of reusable resources.
For my part, I am a little concerned over the notion of a wholesale (or even very broad) shift of an economy of products to an economy of services. The authors suggest an ingenious and potentially highly efficient economy in which the raw materials within most products are essentially leased. In this scenario, for instance, when you were “done” with your car, the manufacturer would reclaim the vehicle which could then be reintroduced into the manufacturing process and become an entirely new car.
This model belies the authors’ backgrounds (McDonough, an architect; Braungart, a chemist) as knowledge-workers. From the knowledge worker’s perspective, wealth is developed by directly creating something valuable, or adding value to a process or product. For many others, building wealth is predicated in some part upon the ownership of resources. This becomes difficult in an economy in which every resource of any transferable value belongs to a corporation.
Despite this and some comparatively minor points of argument, I think Cradle to Cradle is an excellent read. Students of business, economics, and environmental disciplines should make a point of reading it. In the spirit of the book, borrow it from your library or buy it from a local book shop. If you have any recommendations for books, please post.

Egads, I've missed Epiphany

2007-01-09T09:24:00.000-05:00

Koan, document design

2007-01-03T13:05:00.000-05:00

If “this page is left intentionally blank”, then why isn’t it?

Words borrowed from Si Muhand U M’hand

2006-12-29T10:18:00.000-05:00

J'ai juré que de Tizi-Ouzou
Jusqu'a Akfadou
Nul ne me fera subir sa loi
Nous nous briserons
Mais sans plier
Plutôt être maudit
Quand les chefs sont des maquereaux.
L'Exil est inscrit au front
Je préfère quitter le pays Que d'être humilié parmi ces pourceaux.

The Annunciation, c. 1434/1436

2006-12-22T09:38:00.000-05:00

Leges motus

2006-12-21T09:06:00.000-05:00

my hand casts Newton's spells
careless stone obeys
water submits
five rings fade
smaller
gone

Koan, poetics

2006-12-20T08:40:00.000-05:00

Koan, kindergarten

2006-12-19T08:53:00.000-05:00

Did they stop calling it "Indian style", because nobody knows if they mean Indian or Indian?

Koan, recursion

2006-12-18T08:41:00.000-05:00

It would be insanely postmodern if he is sketching me.

Excerpt from an interview with Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, December 7, 2006

2006-12-15T16:25:00.000-05:00

[Full transcript]
...
MR. THOMAS: Thanks. Well, it was good being with you.
SEC. RUMSFELD: It's good to see you.
MR. THOMAS: When you get things, you know, straightened out, come down and see a movie with us. I promise it won't be a war movie.
SEC. RUMSFELD: What kind of a movie?
MR. THOMAS: We got a movie theater we kind of like in our house.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, do you really?
MR. THOMAS: Yeah, we decided we're not leaving anything to the kids, so we're spending it on ourselves since I earned it.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Yeah, damn right. That's my answer. (Laughter.)
MR. THOMAS: (Laughs.) There you go. And so we have this nice movie theater with surround sound --
SEC. RUMSFELD: I've heard these home theaters -- you have chairs that --
MR. THOMAS: Oh, they're fun. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah do that. You can sleep, you can do anything. It's very cool.
SEC. RUMSFELD: My wife --
MR. THOMAS: Juke box, all kinds of stuff.
SEC. RUMSFELD: My wife loves movies.
MR. THOMAS: Oh, good. Well --
SEC. RUMSFELD: She goes all the time with a group of women, and I have not been in six years to the movies.
MR. THOMAS: It'll be fun. I got one for you that'd you'd really love. You got it this Christmas. Get for her and watch it together. It's called "Akeelah and the Bee." Starbucks is involved in it. It's about a little African-American girl, 11-years-old, growing up in Crenshaw in LA. Her father's been killed by some hoodie. Her brother's about to become a hoodie. And they discover that she has this great gift of spelling. Laurence Fishburne is in it, Angela Basset. She goes out and redeems everybody. I mean, this is about every value we care about. Hard work overcoming honesty, integrity. I'm sitting there I'm balling away. I'm cheering for the kid.
SEC. RUMSFELD: (Inaudible) --
MR. THOMAS: (Then they have a bee ?). A-K-E-E-L-A-H -- maybe -- and the B as in spelling bee --
SEC. RUMSFELD: (Laughs.)
MR. THOMAS: I guarantee you I'll give you your money back if you don't love this movie. You will absolutely love this. It's got everything. There's not a white guy -- the only white guy in it is the principal of the school. Everybody else is minority, everybody else gets along.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Did you like the "Sound of Music?"
MR. THOMAS: Of course I liked the "Sound of Music."
SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, so did I.
MR. THOMAS: And you know something?
SEC. RUMSFELD: People laugh at that.
MR. THOMAS: Well, I want to you something. I stalked Julie Andrews for 40 years before I finally got her.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Is that right.
MR. THOMAS: On our shelf, a picture of us having tea together in New York.
SEC. RUMSFELD: How long ago?
MR. THOMAS: Two years. But I --
SEC. RUMSFELD: She's showing her years.
MR. THOMAS: Yeah, well -- no, she looks great.
SEC. RUMSFELD: (Laughs.)
MR. THOMAS: I waited for her outside the Majestic Theater in 1962 in the rain. That's when it started.
SEC. RUMSFELD: (Laughs.)
MR. THOMAS: And that's how I opened the letter to her, you know. So anyway, you got more important things to do.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Good to see you.
MR. THOMAS: Good to you see you, and let's stay in touch.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Terrific.
MR. THOMAS: And come and see a movie. You will love that one, I guarantee it. Merry Christmas.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Thank you. Very good.
MR. THOMAS: Thanks, everybody.

Slam

2006-12-11T13:48:00.000-05:00

Ruminate, enumerate

2006-12-06T16:30:00.000-05:00

I just heard some troubling news about the funding of my office. No, it’s not curtains for ERD’s place of work (we do something like this dance every year), it's just not the sort of thing that I like to hear 7 days after signing all of those mortgage papers.
It’s gotten me thinking about how much life is about numbers, and how those numbers express a remarkable art. At times like these, when words escape me, I am left with numbers. Some are immutable, some changeable, others a wilderness.

2.718281828459045235360287471352662
49775724709369995957496696762772407
66303535475945713821785251664274274
66391932003059921817413596629043572
90033429526059563073813232862794349
07632338298807531952510190115738341
87930702154089149934884167509244761
46066808226480016847741185374234544
24371075390777449920695517027618386
06261331384583000752044933826560297
60673711320070932870912744374704723
06969772093101416928368190255151086
57463772111252389784425056953696770
78544996996794686445490598793163688
92300987931277361782154249992295763
514822082698951936680331825288693

Five pieces of strangers’ lives, or words overheard on an otherwise quiet train

2006-11-22T12:52:00.001-05:00

“I’ve been doing a lot of amputations lately.”

“No. The problem is, we’re still not liquid.”

“My therapist was right. God really does hate me.”

“Where are you? No. Where are you?”

“When I’m richer than you, I’ll be giving the gifts.”

The roses

2006-11-17T10:06:00.000-05:00

Despite having convinced myself that I had no time between studying finance, packing boxes for the move, and preparing for a Thursday meeting, Wednesday evening I attended a reception at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
I didn’t get much time to look at any exhibits beyond the vicinity of the reception, but the venue itself is fantastic.
American Art shares (as it has for some time) the old US Patent Office Building with the National Portrait Gallery. The Greek Revival building was recently renovated to add a great deal of color and a sense of movement. Reopened this summer, the space is worth a visit in and of itself.
The event was for me a good reminder to stop and smell the pinot grigio and wild mushroom tarts.

Long-overdue requiem for Pluto

2006-11-14T17:18:00.000-05:00

It finally happened, nearly three months ago now. On the 24th of August, 2006, Pluto ceased to be a planet.
Having been an astronomy student in the days of Hyakutaki and the epic Shoemaker-Levy 9, I was for a couple of years drunk on the unflatteringly named sub-discipline, known as “debris astronomy”.
The debate over Pluto’s planetness had already been raging for decades when I joined the periphery of the fray. The detested debris astronomers argued the matter like foxes discussing security arrangements for the chicken houses. The geology and planetology crowd defended the little ball of ice with the ferocity of a mother hippo guarding her calf. The cosmologists: “What? That? Who cares? Hey, did you see what Ed Witten just wrote?”
It occurs to me that the Voyager spacecraft are speeding toward the edge of our understanding, carrying artifacts that declare to whomever finds them, that Pluto is the 9th planet in our solar system. We were sufficiently certain of this fact at one point to make such a permanent declaration.
I’m packing a lot of boxes lately, having more or less sold my house and bought another one. I recall opening the door to my current home, thinking that I was far too young to own anything as complicated as a house, and that after the odyssey that was the purchase, convincing myself that I would never contemplate doing that again.
My home has become Pluto in July, hurdling toward a change that will have no immediate effect on its composition or appearance, a change that will be impossible to recognize from a distance, but a change no less significant.

Returns

2006-11-08T09:09:00.000-05:00

[work in progress, yet untitled]

2006-11-03T09:04:00.000-05:00

Dervish ink
slices out tiny circles
angles
(some might say serif)
driven to bite like a sharp axe
burried in my chest
by lunatic arms
I drink a broth
of red & white fungus
and wear a shirt
rendered from the hides
of bears or boars
in ecstatic hope
Lacquered hair crowns me
and blue earth-pigment
adorns mine eyes
as I gaze at stars
directed to rise over
menhirs
mourning
morning

Indulgence

2006-10-31T09:50:00.000-05:00

Four hundred eighty-nine years ago today, Martin Luther posed a series of questions to his community, inviting scholarly debate on a breadth of religious concerns. He would be persecuted for asking questions, refusing to recant, and otherwise deviating from the orthodoxy of his church and the academic community. The confluence of national and religious politics, the proliferation of print, and Luther’s philosophy would become one of the formative events of the modern era.

Every year, this august observance makes me feel proud to have been raised in the tradition of Luther's theology. Each year, I also find that this event raises a host of unanswered questions. I debate theology over beer with Roman Catholic friends, and find myself increasingly concerned over the return to reactionary and exclusive doctrines practiced by believers with whom I share a common name.
This anniversary also turns the lens of scrutiny on continued (or perhaps redoubled) mingling of religion and government. Many of my friends contend that the state should be an atheist and that believers should cloister any opinion related to a religious conviction within the walls of their place of worship. I argue that the state has no more business adopting the dogma of the atheist than it does proselytizing Christianity or Islam or deism.
The attempts of political parties to infiltrate religious doctrine has become an even greater ethical hazard. If we allow politicians to back policy decisions and laws into religious philosophy, then we invite monarchy. In the days when state was coupled to church, autocrats ruled by claim of divine right, making their whims, whatever they may be, morally unassailable.
The assertion that any political entity works on behalf of and with the authority of any deity is as poisonous as it is laughable. Which party is honest? Which is not guilty of skirting (or patently breaking) the law of the land for political gain? Is there a party that has not indignantly decried its enemies for doing something its own members are guilty of? If we cannot trust these organizations to consistently attempt to uphold the secular laws and standards they seek to set, why would anyone invite them to greater authority?
Regardless of your religious convictions, today is an opportunity to question the leaders in your community, both political and religious. Read, question, reflect, act. There are important decisions only a week away.

Your politics are your own. Whatever they may be, register to vote.

My notebook remains a Quaker meeting

2006-10-27T09:37:00.000-04:00

The spirit is willing, but the pen is weak.

Crash

2006-10-23T08:59:00.000-04:00

Forces

2006-10-13T10:54:00.000-04:00

I believe the last three weeks (and I predict the ensuing month at least) constitute one of those periods in which my blog becomes a little grown-over. Other matters, on which I have little doubt I will pontificate and complain to the reader, have demanded my attention.
Still, I have been ruminating on the idea of influences and connection, and rather than posting yet another haiku or koanic image, I’ll share a list of books that have influenced my thinking and writing over the last year, though I’ve probably forgotten a few. While I don’t necessarily agree with everything these authors have offered in these titles, I can with limited exception recommend all of these to the reader.

A Great Improvisation, Stacey Schiff
The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
Pomes All Sizes, Jack Kerouac
Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Art of Peace, Morihei Ueshiba
Your Backyard Herb Garden, Miranda Smith
Harvard Business Review on Knowledge Management, various
The Stolen Child, Keith Donohue
Hands-On Environmentalism, Brent Haglund and Thomas Still
The Gospel of Luke (NIV)
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carol
Organization Theory and Design, Richard L. Daft
Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, Manfred B. Steger
The Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier
The Limits of Enchantment, Graham Joyce
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa
Foundations of Finance: The Logic and Practice of Financial Management, Arthur J. Keown, J. William Petty, John D. Martin, and David F. Scott
The Best American Poetry – 2004, Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman

I also read National Geographic, cover to cover, and the journals Science and Quality Progress, as time permits.

A tremendously brief haiku in the English language borrowing elements of Latin grammar and describing a fact of which I am moderately certain

2006-10-04T12:22:00.000-04:00

Visual koan

2006-10-03T12:32:00.000-04:00

Buon compleanno

2006-09-29T09:04:00.000-04:00

Teraphim

2006-09-22T16:58:00.000-04:00

I wish it were bee, but it is heron. A tribe of sisters and the odd brother, Apis melifera is infinitely social, raising the collective children, and intimately industrious, dancing out the nectar-dance to show all the way.
Heron, Ardea herodias, on the other hand stands alone, watching the fickle horizon or the heavens reflected in the scrying pools at his feet. He divines the secrets of mudbug ecology and of the hard rain heralds, locks them in the vault behind his eyes. His posture and his beak remind me of ibis (whose orthodox name escapes me); the ibis with his peck, peck mud-dipping beak is the aspect of Thoth, patron of the scribes. Three-times Great, Great resolves to absolve himself of his obfuscated philosophy through industrious scribbling. Can heron’s disciple to the same?

Cross

2006-09-20T15:39:00.000-04:00

He takes the same train I do
The same A to B
We ve never acknowledged
Neutral scowling rush hour faces
Now he appears at lunch
Arrives in costume to play in the wrong scene
No less disgruntled
At the quiet indignity of eating a sandwich
Than in riding the rails
Another lost actor strolls by my window
Pink flipflops over white lead chevron stripes
Her proper place is the bagel shop
Twenty two miles away
God is running out of actors
In the sitcom of my life
Ratings must be down

Inalienable

2006-09-15T09:14:00.000-04:00

Sunday is Constitution Day, in commemoration of the completion of the draft of the US Constitution that we know today. I took a few moments to read the preamble this morning.
It would be a couple of years between the completion of the constitution and the creation of the Bill of Rights, but Constitution Day has turned my attention toward the amendments, as well.
Most Americans know (sort of) the 1st amendment, which guarantees some of our most important intellectual freedoms. Many others focus on the second amendment, no less important, that guarantees Americans the right to provide for their own defense. I find, however, that a staggering number of people haven't the faintest idea of what freedoms are ensured by the other faint brown words emblazoned on that fragile paper. For those who defile these in practice, I challenge you to have the courage to publicly ask for their repeal:

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Elections are fast approaching. The primaries are behind us, and if you haven't already done so now is a good time to start preparing for the generals. I encourage everyone to read the Bill of Rights, inform yourself on the issues at play on your local ballots, and vote with your mind and your conscience. It is never enough to simply show up and punch the ticket along party lines.

Your politics are your own. Whatever they may be, register to vote.

Red states

2006-09-08T12:20:00.000-04:00

With the flurry of yahoos scrambling for office on TV, the radio, and at my train station, I found myself discussing politics with a friend of mine the other day. It started with a heated discourse over the pandemic war on terror abroad, which of course degenerated into picking apart the wherefores of the US's current leadership. One term from that discussion, in particular, keeps popping back into my head: "Red states".
In my youth, no self-respecting American would have ever described their state as "red". Red states were the enemy. They mostly loomed on the right side of that clunky Mercator projection wall-map, while we steadfastly defended the left and what was right. That war, though lengthy, behaved itself. Battles were waged in classrooms and by lonely chameleon polyglots in foggy cities, sometimes spawning open-war in far-off places where the outcome didn't affect the price of anything.
Then, like settling into a still pond after days of hiking under a heavy pack, we won. I know this. I remember it. My father keeps a graffitied piece of the Berlin Wall on his mantle, and I've seen an inordinately larger piece on display at a location that does not exist in Langley, VA.
So, I find myself today wondering, where is the brave new world? Wasn't the victorious end of the Cold War supposed to usher-in a utopia of technology, democracy, and free-market riches for all?
I take classes for my graduate degree with a healthy contingent of active-duty military folks. From them, I hear repeated again and again the phrase, "America is the only remaining superpower". When I was much younger, I believed this, too. It may have briefly been true.
In reality, this sentiment over-simplifies our situation. It is an anachronism, declaring a continued universal victory that is predicated on 1970's political thought. How can this definition of a superpower persist in an environment of the economic superpowers of the European Union, or India, or China? Can we continue to claim military supremacy in a world where stateless theocrats raise transnational kamikaze? At the end of the 18th century, another group of stateless ideologues used ersatz weapons, abhorrent tactics, and the quiet aid of a legitimate state to squarely defeat a military and economic superpower.
Moreover, we now risk forfeiting our status as an ideological superpower. Wealth ebbs and flows. Military might is a long race in many stages; the favored competitors are bound to trade the lead on any given day. But the strength of this state lies in its commitment to the ideals of fundamental rights and freedoms.
As we look south to a remnant of the old red states and our enclave there, we must ask, who in this fight is being defeated?

2006-09-06T08:55:00.000-04:00

still pond stirs
pebble wrinkles nod-off
inhale

Sunday morning meditation

2006-09-03T17:40:00.000-04:00

I have no idea as to the origins of the recipe. It may be some piece of folk wisdom, or a hallmark of domestic science handed to my mother by her high school teacher. It is equally likely that it came from the back of a bag or one of the hundreds of back issues of Good Housekeeping that clutter my grandmother's smokehouse.
It is certainly not my grandmother's recipe. I can't make them the same way that she does, as my hands are not the same size as hers and I don't own that wooden bowl that has been scuffed with flour since long before I was born. For her it's not so much a recipe, nor even a rote, as it is a process that her fingers execute without thought, like the complicated but invisible series of motions involved in standing up and walking.
When I'm done casting the spell my mother gave me, working an ordinary feat of practical magic, I have a pan of biscuits that's not exactly right, but that reminds me of the genuine article. I make them more like the authentic ones from my grandmother's kitchen by serving with the proper accoutrements: a mixture of peanut butter* and a syrup that I've never seen sold anywhere outside of Louisiana. At a meal other than breakfast, I might place them alongside black-eyed peas or butterbeans and chowchow.
I don't imagine my readers will be overwhelmed by these little loaves, as they will not evoke for them the memory of sitting on an rough wooden pew, salvaged from the Old Church and placed next to my grandmother's table. However, for those who would like to join me for a simple breakfast some Sunday morning, enjoy:

2 cups of flour
1T sugar
1t salt
1T baking powder

1/3 cup butter
2/3 cup milk

preheat oven to 450
mix dry ingredients
cut in butter
stir in milk
knead
shape into 6 even balls
bake in a dark pan for 15 minutes, more or less

*My brother would wrongly use crunchy peanut butter and too little syrup, while some of my cousins would argue that the mixture requires warm butter. These notions are crazy if not immoral and are presented only as a cautionary example.
Also, if the reader can’t come by proper cane syrup, molasses may suffice in its place.

Ephemera

2006-08-29T09:02:00.000-04:00

Yesterday evening, I went to read one of the blogs I frequent, and found that it and the blogster who wrote it are both gone. Click.
I was surprised by my reaction. I've seen blogs evaporate before, and all of the warning signs were present in this one. I found myself melancholy and gently stunned by the disappearance. It reminded me of the vanishing city in The Brief History of the Dead.
This ubiquitous happening unceremoniously cut a thread. (Though, I wouldn't complain if more people rose to the courtesy of deleting their blog after the third and final entry that, two years ago, began with "I'm so bored...") I find a "one step back" scenario in my effort to expand my network of writers, poets, philosophers, artists, and daydreamers.
As I looked over the bare grave-marker Profile screen, I thought back to a sweltering July evening, when I was working one of those jobs that paid the tuition for a couple of years but otherwise remains a footnote in the story of my life. I was working at a driving range, and that night found myself cursing the mosquitoes, telling myself that they were infinitely worse than they had been the previous summer. I thought I must surely be imagining this development.
Glancing over my shoulder at the baleful light coming from the tall lamps illuminating the parking lot, I realized that the phenomenon was not imagined. The dominoes in my head started falling over: the new street lights; the parking lot that now covered the half-acre stand of old trees adjacent to the range; the small army of golf ball-sized bats that had lived in the trees; the memory of watching bats diving in and out of the powerful beams of the overhead range lights; the swarms of insects that were lured into the harsh light, only to be devoured. One collapse yielded dozens of changes.
Now, I grumble to myself over the people who would have followed that lost blog to mine. Hubris. Of course, I realize that this is futile. There was no grand destiny for some reader to follow the convoluted series of sharp angles across the web to spend a moment over what I have written. If there had been, they would have gotten here, or may yet by some other route. For now, I read and write and tie more threads.