Thought occurred to me this morning, when I was reading this month's Atlantic Monthly. Was reading an article about Geo-engineering, a relatively new field concerned with, for lack of a better word, "Terra-forming " Terra in the face of Global Warming and Climate Change. Interesting article, as was the rest of the issue. This article struck me though because it was a primer on really weird ideas. "If this idea sounds unlikely, consider that President Obama's science adviser, John Holdern, said in April that he thought the administration would consider it "if we get desperate enough." Well, shit...anyway, the article discusses using genetically altered trees to suck up the carbon, plankton seas around the Arctic and Antarctic to suck up the carbon, and a network of Zeppleins sucking up a mixture of carbon dioxide and sulphur and spewing it out at 65000 feet. Remember the sky in Blade Runner? It could work, it's cheap, and if it ever gets interrupted, things could go south very, very fast. Same with the Plankton...when Plankton dies, it gives off methane...geo-engineer plankton carpets and things could get very screwy, as methane is "worse" than carbon for climate. There's an interview with Nouriel "Dr. Doom"Roubini by James Fallows who's been writing for the Atlantic almost as long as I've been reading it; I've been reading it regularly for over 40 years. Fallows writes well and on a lot of things, although economics, computers, aviation and Asia are favorite things. It's interesting that he interviewed Roubini at the end of a flight for the good doctor to Malayasia...
But someday, the emergency will be over. Then the side effects of
today’s deficits-be-damned efforts to spend money and loosen credit
will become “the problem you are facing.” Roubini has been tart about
the things public officials should have known and the dangers they
should have foreseen three or four years ago. What, I asked him, are
the decisions of 2009 that we will be regretting in 2012? For the only time in our conversation, he sat without responding for a
measurable interval. “The regrets could be many,” he began.
Uh-oh
, I thought. “Even the best policies sometimes have unintended consequences.” He then itemized three...“The question is, can the U.S. grow in a non-bubble way?” He asked the question rhetorically, so I turned it back on him.
Can
it? “I think we have to …” He paused. “You know, the potential for our
future growth is going to be lower, because of the excesses we’ve had.
Sustainable growth may mean investing slowly in infrastructures for the
future, and rebuilding our human capital. Renewable resources. Maybe
nanotechnology? We don’t know what it’s going to be. There are parts of
the economy we can expect to lead to a more sustainable and less
bubble-like growth. But it’s going to be a challenge to find a new
growth model. It’s not going to be simple.” I took this not as
pessimism but as realism.
Garry Wills has a piece on his friendship with William F. Buckley. It's interesting reading as a lot of Wills' stuff tends to be. But I found Christopher Hitchens review of Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life more interesting still. When Chris isn't drunkenly picking fights with Hezbollah in Beirut or babbling in an undisciplined fashion about his current hobby-horse, he's an excellent critic and analyst. As a recently sworn-in citizen, he displays all the zeal of the convert for the American ideal; at the same time, the contrarian and analytic part of the whole thing that is Hitchens who is both older and fatter than "Madcow" and who allowed himself to be waterboarded by people who knew what they were doing as opposed to someone who'd read about it to see if it's torture and lasted about 12 seconds to Madcow's five makes him an tough critic. Oh, Hitchens may have been waterboarded twice, because he felt that he had been a coward the first time. Ouch...Anyway, Hitchens sees Lincoln as the first President who could only have been an American. And, he appreciates being treated by the author as an adult! Well, so do most well-read people.
As for the social background, here is a sentence that conveys a great deal of misery in a very few words. It is Burlingame’s summary of the area in which Sinking Spring farm, Kentucky, young Abraham’s birthplace, was situated. “The neighborhood was thinly settled; the 36-square-mile tax district where the Lincoln farm was located contained 85 taxpayers, 44 slaves, and 392 horses.” Lincoln himself said that his early life could be “condensed into a single sentence” from Gray’s “Elegy”: “The short and simple annals of the poor.” But this would be to euphemize his true boyhood situation, which was much more like that of a serf or a domestic animal than of Gray’s lowly but sturdy peasantry. To read of the unrelenting coarseness and brutality of the boy’s father is lowering to the spirit, as is the shame he felt at his mother’s reputation for unchastity. The wretchedness of these surroundings made Lincoln tell a later acquaintance in Illinois: “I have seen a good deal of the back side of this world..." From this, and from the many groans and sighs that are reported of the boy (who still struggled to keep reading, an activity feared and despised by his father, as it was by the owner of Frederick Douglass), we receive a prefiguration of the politician who declared in 1856, “I used to be a slave.” In Lincoln’s unconcealed resentment toward his male parent, we get an additional glimpse of the man who also declared, in 1858, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”
So, the Atlantic works. James Fallows works. Chris Hitchens works. What else?
Well, Kettle Bells work. This is a Russian piece of weight-lifting equipment that has given rise to a whole school of training. However, the way the bell is designed allows the weight to use the muscular skeletal system differently than classic free weights. They are simple, and the routines work the core as well as the area targeted in a particular exercise. Kettle bells work. You know what else works? CrossFit works like a motherfucker.
Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist. The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We’ve used our same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs. The needs of Olympic athletes and our grandparents differ by degree not kind. Our terrorist hunters, skiers, mountain bike riders and housewives have found their best fitness from the same regimen.
Gibson Guitars work. Now, so do lots of guitars, but Crusader AXE is addicted to Gibsons for their exceptional playability, beauty and sound. They are iconic as very few instruments can be...everybody plays Fenders, but the Les Paul is the Rock and Roll Guitar...unless it's an SG...or, and my own favorite, the ES 335. As for acoustic axes, the AXE is still in love with the Gibson Songwriter Deluxe he got used a couple of years ago...but, I regret selling my Bluesman and I still wince to realize I traded my LG1 over fifteen years ago for a Washburn. Hey the guitar was old; I'd had it since 1966, and I bought it used then. But, it was mine ...earned the money for it, and played it for a helluva long time. Not as well as these guys, but...
You know, there are a lot of things that work. Government, business, the Auto Industry, and on and on and on,don't work. But some things do, and they are kind of the things that make life worth it all.
Comments